New York City - The newly established Peter G. Peterson Foundation today announced its first round of eight grants, among them one to Public Agenda for $500,000 to expand its Facing Up to the Nation's Finances public engagement initiative with the two-year project "Students Face Up to the Nation's Finances" to advance college campus conversations on the United States' looming fiscal crisis.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation grant to Public Agenda supports the expansion of the Students Face Up to the Nation's Finances initiative, to refine and disseminate a package of learning materials designed to raise college students' awareness of our national fiscal challenges and engage college students across the nation in a discussion of the solutions. The materials, which will be provided to at least 500 colleges and universities, can be adopted as mini-courses within existing classes. Intensive work with four colleges - to be identified in the first year of the grant - will yield even more innovative uses of the materials. The initiative aims to involve 20,000 to 30,000 college students in using the tools and for professors and colleges not directly recruited by Public Agenda to begin adopting the materials, as well.

The Students Face Up to the Nation's Finances initiative will coordinate with two other organizations that have been instrumental in the initial piloting of the student program, The National Academy of Public Administration and The Concord Coalition.

Founded by the senior chairman of The Blackstone Group with a commitment of $1 billion, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is dedicated to increasing public awareness of the nature and urgency of several key challenges threatening America's future, and to accelerating action on them. To address these challenges successfully, the Foundation will work to bring Americans together to find sensible, long-term solutions that transcend age, party lines and ideological divides in order to achieve real results. In the near term, the Foundation is devoting most of its efforts to three issues threatening the nation's financial future: our budget, savings, and balance of payment/trade deficits, rising health care costs, and the government's unfunded promises for Social Security and Medicare.

"With its addiction to debt, near-zero national and personal savings rates, and rising costs for health care and unfunded promises for Social Security and Medicare, America is burdened with $53 trillion in obligations - and today's young people and future generations will face the collection notices," said David M. Walker, President and CEO of the Foundation and former Comptroller General of the United States. "With Students Face Up to the Nation's Finances, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation affirms its belief in the necessity of engaging young people on these issues, helping them understand the challenges and involving them in charting a course for our nation's fiscal stability. This is not a Democratic issue, or a Republican issue - it's an American issue."

"Public Agenda is honored to be among the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's first-round grant recipients," said Ruth A. Wooden, President of Public Agenda. "Our work to engage the general public on these issues over the past two years indicates that young people quickly grasp the severity of the challenges we face and theirs can be extremely compelling voices for taking proactive steps. Students Face Up to the Nation's Finances will engage thousands of young people and bring them into the national discussion of what should be the priorities of our federal government and how we pay for them."

More information about the student initiative, including materials, partners and opportunities for students will be posted to www.facingup.org as they become available.