At Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Conference Liberty Mutual Foundation President to Discuss Enormous Vulnerability Facing Homeless Youth
In response to a nearly 20 percent increase since 2013 in the number of young people who are homeless in Massachusetts, the Liberty Mutual Foundation has strengthened its support of local nonprofit partners who serve the youth homeless population. Today, Melissa MacDonnell, president of the Liberty Mutual Foundation, will discuss the crisis facing this vulnerable population and the work underway to help address it during her speech at the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Conference, an annual conference designed to bring together corporate citizenship professionals to share ideas, brainstorm and learn best practices. In the general session presentation, MacDonnell will share the steps Liberty Mutual and its grantee partners are taking this year to address the youth homelessness crisis in Boston.
According to the Boston Public Schools, there are an estimated 4,500 students who are homeless in Boston and over 21,000 in Massachusetts. “Through conversations with school officials and nonprofits serving homeless individuals, we gained a greater understanding of the scope and complexity of this issue,” said MacDonnell. “We are committed to helping our grantee partners eradicate this issue by convening local organizations to generate ideas and solutions, funding nonprofits that work with homeless youth in various capacities and supporting research to measure progress and understand what services are needed.”
To combat the youth homelessness crisis in Boston, Liberty Mutual has granted more than $2 million to 29 qualifying organizations providing support to youth who are homeless, allowing grantee partners to expand their capacity for supporting this population. Facilitating collaboration among local organizations, Liberty Mutual hosted a New England Regional Summit on Ending Youth Homelessness with partners from the United States Council on Interagency Homelessness (USICH) and the Melville Charitable Trust. More than 120 attendees generated ideas and brainstormed workable solutions toward ending youth homelessness. Liberty Mutual has also hosted the Boston Youth Service Network (BYSN) and other groups several times a year to leverage the full group’s knowledge, understand resources and orchestrate partnerships.
In partnership with Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Liberty Mutual is supporting the local execution of the Chapin Hall Voices of Youth Count (VoYC) to help the community understand the number of homeless and runaway youth, the reasons why they are homeless, how they survive, the needs and services they use and what new services could improve their outcomes.
"The youth homelessness crisis in Boston has reached a critical point," said Elisabeth Jackson, Executive Director of Bridge Over Troubled Waters. “In order to enact change, like-minded organizations must come together. Supporting the Chapin Hall research is a great example of how our community can unite to find new solutions and raise awareness of this growing problem.”
At the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Conference, MacDonnell will present alongside Klare Shaw, national director of programs at Liberty Mutual Foundation and Matthew Morton, research and fellow principal investigator from the VoYC at Chapin Hall, University of Chicago. The presentation will also include a panel discussion with Sam Greenberg, co-founder of Y2Y Youth Shelter and Elisabeth Jackson, Executive Director of Bridge Over Troubled Waters. The panel discussion will be kicked off by a series of powerful video interviews with homeless youth who explain how they became homeless, the struggles they have faced seeking shelter, and the positive steps they are taking to seize control of their future.
Attendees of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Conference can attend this general session today, March 27, 2017, 3:30-4:30 p.m. in the America Ballroom at the Westin Copley Place. This event is closed to the public.
Editor’s Note: Media interested in speaking with Melissa MacDonnell or her co-presenters should contact Stephanie Fergione at lmf@inkhouse.com.
About Liberty Mutual Foundation:
Liberty Mutual Foundation is the umbrella platform for all of Liberty Mutual Insurance’s charitable work, providing resources, expertise and partnership for organizations that are focused on helping people achieve their potential. In the past five years, Liberty Mutual and its employees have given over $260 million to organizations in need. Liberty Mutual Foundation provides grants to qualifying charitable organizations in three focus areas: accessibility for those living with disabilities, security for men, women and children who are homeless and educational opportunities for children in low-income communities. Liberty Mutual’s Give with Liberty and Serve with Liberty philanthropic programs provide employees the opportunities to give and serve in their own communities. To date, the Give with Liberty program has supported more than 8,000 charities, while employees participating in the Serve with Liberty program have provided assistance to nonprofit organizations in 20 countries around the world. For more information, visit http://bit.ly/2fLo36j.
About Liberty Mutual Insurance:
Liberty Mutual Insurance helps people preserve and protect what they earn, build, own and cherish. Keeping this promise means we are there when our policyholders throughout the world need us most.
In business since 1912, and headquartered in Boston, Mass., today Liberty Mutual is a diversified insurer with operations in 30 countries and economies around the world. We are the fifth largest property and casualty insurer in the U.S. based on 2015 direct written premium data as reported by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. We also rank 73rd on the Fortune 100 list of largest corporations in the U.S. based on 2015 revenue. As of December 31, 2016, Liberty Mutual had $38.3 billion in annual consolidated revenue.
Liberty employs more than 50,000 people in over 800 offices throughout the world. We offer a wide range of insurance products and services, including personal automobile, homeowners, accident & health, commercial automobile, general liability, property, surety, workers compensation, group disability, group life, specialty lines, reinsurance, individual life and annuity products.
You can learn more about us by visiting www.libertymutualinsurance.com.
Contact:
Adrianne Kaufmann
617-574-5983
Adrianne.kaufmann@libertymutual.com
Stephanie Fergione
(781) 966-4100
lmf@inkhouse.com
