Giving Compass' Take:

• Aaron Walker urges us to target coronavirus relief efforts with an aim to improve innovations and education for social justice.

• Walker discusses a part of rebuilding we must not leave out. What role does education play in this? How can we dedicate ourselves to ensuring a concentrated effort towards social justice?

• Learn more about the importance of your giving throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

The current hurricane—the coronavirus—gives us a chance to think anew as a social impact sector and as a nation about the future we want to pass along. This is our once in a 100-year opportunity. But just because we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance, it does not mean we will necessarily seize it. In our fixation on grades and achievement, we have too often left out the most important “part” of what it takes to build a better future for our children.

Now again, I worry that this “part,” which too often gets taken out, is just the part that we need the most.

That “part” is a holistic approach to investing in education. It is the argument that what happens outside of the school matters as much as what happens within. It is the statement that health and food matter. That economic opportunities matter. And that black lives matter, too.

We cannot educate through the fact that 11 million go to bed hungry. We can’t ignore that there are 3,800 areas with high levels of lead in the water. We can’t forget that five children are murdered daily by someone responsible for their care. And we must own up to the fact that we have a system where those who make all other work possible—especially teachers—are underpaid.

Now, more than ever, we can no longer leave critical parts out. Those parts are the lives of individuals, families and communities to whom we are all inextricably linked. Those parts are the work of anti-racism. A massive investment in leaders of color and designing for equity is the first step. All the parts we leave out of this redesign will be the ones we’ll be fixing until the next crisis blooms.

Read the full article about rebuilding with innovative education for social justiceD by Aaron Walker at EdSurge.