2023 Grant Recipients
National Police Accountability Project
New Orleans, LA
Amount granted: $35,000
Grant year: 2023
Grant category: Human Services
$35,000 to support The National Police Accountability Project (“NPAP”) and its Heartland Police Accountability Academy.
The National Police Accountability Project is a national organization dedicated to holding police and correctional officers accountable to professional and constitutional standards. Its 550+ members litigate the thousands of cases of police and correctional officer misconduct that do not make national headlines. Its Heartland Police Accountability Academy is a year-long training and support program for attorneys in Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota to build skills and confidence in bringing civil rights cases. The program will focus on providing attorneys with the nuts and bolts of civil rights litigation for cases against individual police correctional officers and their employers.
Shelter Music Boston
Boston, MA
Amount granted: $35,000
Grant year: 2023
Grant categories: Human Services, Music
$35,000 to support Shelter Music Boston’s Songs of Life Program.
Shelter Music Boston presents classical chamber music concerts of the highest
artistic standards in homeless shelters and other sheltering environments. Its goal is to promote community, creative interaction, respect, and therapeutic benefit. Songs of Life: Music Shared from Shelters and Other Program includes audiences in the composition of classical music performed for them. This new music reflects the viewpoints, experiences, and life challenges faced by those who are homeless and caught in related social, economic, and health problems. The goal of Songs of Life relates directly to a core tenet of its mission: to convey the essential dignity of its audiences and encourage them to be agents of change through its work and in their own lives.
SPARKSHARE
Boston, MA
Amount granted: $25,000
Grant year: 2023
Grant category: Human Services
$25,000 to support Year Two of the Human Centered Design pilot program.
Sparkshare was created to bring together high school youth to address the problems that they choose to solve and things that mattered to them. Through the power of its Network’s convenings, connections, and learning, SparkShare youth teams share challenges and ideas, develop skills and confidence as problem-solvers, and make connections that enable them to drive positive change in their communities. Its youth teams are focused on issues such as mental wellness, substance use, economic empowerment, and racial justice.
The objective for Design Thinking is to give young people a structured system where they learn how to understand the population they are trying to impact, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create and test innovative solutions to address the problems they see in their communities. SparkShare began with the idea that by bringing people together across the boundaries that divide them, they could begin to solve society’s most intractable problems. Through Human Centered Design, the aim is to provide young people with the tool kit they need to do that.
The Community Fund of Darien
Darien, CT
Amount granted: $35,000
Grant year: 2023
Grant category: Human Services
$35,000 to support local organizations who are addressing food insecurity issues in the region.
The Community Fund of Darien plays a significant role in addressing the health and human services needs in Darien, Norwalk and Stamford through strategic leadership and grantmaking. Its mission is to enhance the capacity of the community to care for one another by conducting a needs assessment every three years to identify community challenges, opportunities, and gaps. Funds will be used to support local organizations addressing food insecurity and food access issues.