The Student Freedom Initiative (SFI) and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens teamed up to host a fireside chat on investing in Atlanta’s next generation on Thursday. Hosted at the flagship location of the Gathering Spot, the evening was filled with discussions on how to close the wealth gap created by excessive college loan debt.
The fireside chat featured Dickens, Nancy Flake Johnson, the president and CEO of The Urban League Greater Atlanta, and Keith Shoates, president and CEO of the Student Freedom Initiative. They dived into the mayor’s Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative, a sweeping initiative to make significant investments in historically underserved communities. According to the mayor, this initiative has resulted in a 44% reduction in homicides and the construction of nearly 12,000 units of affordable housing, with many more units currently under construction.
The event follows the 2024 Year of the Youth, a program launched in 2023 to provide resources and support to the city’s youth. Since the program’s launch, the city has seen a 56% reduction in youth crime, attributed mainly to initiatives such as the Summer Youth Employment program.
“That’s what the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative is all about. It’s taking the whole of government, taking our non profit partners and civic partners, as well as our business partners, and saying in these areas, we’re going to have investments in people and places in a meaningful way that’s going to drive economic enhancements, affordability, as well as youth development, childcare centers, and grocery stores,” Dickens said. “All of the above is how we’re going to invest in and we’re going to bring energy to these spaces, and we’re going to do this development without displacing the current residents. They’re going to see the benefit of these new amenities and activities.”
Two of those partners are the SFI and the Urban League Greater Atlanta. The mission of the SFI is to empower students at participating Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and MSis with programs that drive persistence toward graduation, creating pathways to economic opportunity without the burden of excessive debt. That mission began with a speech from philanthropist Robert F. Smith at Morehouse College’s 2019 graduation, where he paid off the student loan debt for the entire class.
The change that moment sparked is the core principle of what both organizations hope to accomplish for today’s youth: creating resources and a plan to invest in the youth and the communities they live in.
“Yes, there is $1.7 trillion worth of student loan debt. Yes, there are 43 million borrowers. Yes, they even average around $39,000 each, but the problem is that it delays fully funding retirement plans by 71% of those people. 45% of those people also delay buying their first home, starting a family, and having children. It’s the wealth problem. It’s not the student debt problem,” Shoates said. “So our approach was, how do we address this thing we call the wealth gap, and do it from what we call the lens of education?”
Essentially, the three keynote speakers referred to the mission as a “group project,” emphasizing that they couldn’t sustain transformational change without the help of one another. The event concluded with a call to action by Courtney English, the newly appointed chief of staff for the City of Atlanta, making the case for continued investment into communities and specific zip codes, such as the 30318, to decrease the wealth gap and life expectancy gap.