Arianna Huffington and Edward Norton see a solution to America’s job crisis in nonprofit organizations.
The President and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post Media Group and the critically-acclaimed actor spoke with HuffPost Live’s Alicia Menendez Tuesday about the JobRaising Challenge. The challenge is a nonprofit job-creation initiative organized by The Huffington Post, the Skoll Foundation, Crowdrise and Knowledge Partner McKinsey & Company. Norton is the co-founder of Crowdrise, an online fundraising site.
The competition will award the top three employment-boosting nonprofit organizations that raise the most money through Crowdrise. With $250,000 in prizes at stake, the applicant pool has been narrowed down to about 70 nonprofits from more than 200 original entrants, Huffington said.
“We wanted to demonstrate that not-for-profits are also job-creators,” she said, describing how charities are known for their social causes rather than their workforce.
Huffington points to finalist organizations such as Girls Who Code, which helps teen girls pursue career opportunities in engineering and technology, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Of America, which provides services for returning vets and their families.
Huffington and Norton also emphasized how the competition allows anyone to help address the nation's unemployment crisis by supporting these organizations.
“Unemployment and job creation is a very ephemeral idea for many people,” Norton said. “They understand what employment is, but as an issue that they can address, most people don’t feel that its something they can play an individual role in.”
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