Grant Category: Human Services
Rise Above Foundation
Northbridge, MA
Amount granted: $40,000
Grant year: 2024
Grant category: Human Services
$40,000 to support the increased distribution of its Launch Boxes Program.
Rise Above Foundation was established in 2009 to provide youth in foster care with enriching activities, opportunities, and experiences. Rise Above gives youth in foster care access to opportunities that boost their physical, mental, social, and academic wellbeing. Since it began, the organization has provided over 13,000 Massachusetts youth with additional funding that allowed them to participate in extra curricula activities like summer camp, being a part of the football team, joining the school band, taking driver’s education classes or studying abroad in college. Rise Above also support young adults who grew up in foster care and are aging out of the system, as they transition to the next phase of their lives without DCF support. Its Launch Boxes support youth at a critical moment of transition, providing them with the basic household items and resources they need to live independently, “launching” them into adulthood set up for success.
Community Boat Building
Boston, MA
Amount granted: $20,000
Grant year: 2024
Grant categories: Education, Human Services
$20,000 to cover the videographer’s services, video production, and the creation of educational resources for teacher training.
Community Boat Building’s (CBB) mission is to bring real world experience and academic skills together to stimulate excitement for learning among low-income students in public schools in Boston and the surrounding areas through boat building and coastal experiences. CBB introduces approximately 160 5th graders each year to the accessibility and wonders of Boston Harbor, its islands, rivers, and history, while developing spatial thinking skills and reinforcing core academic subjects–math, geometry, science, social studies, and literacy. For most of its students, The core concept of the program revolves around wooden rowboats, which are built with teams of 5-6 students each. The process uses high-quality materials, limited student group size, and a cadre of volunteers to ensure each boat, and student, reaches its potential.
National Police Accountability Project
New Orleans, LA
Amount granted: $20,000
Grant year: 2024
Grant category: Human Services
$20,000 to pilot a program which will offer appellate support to its member attorneys bringing police misconduct cases.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One Can Help
Boston, MA
Amount granted: $20,000
Grant year: 2022
Grant category: Human Services
$20,000 to provide and expand directly needed resources to DCF and court involved children and families to meet the increase in requests for assistance.
One Can Help (OCH) was created in 2006 by juvenile court attorneys and social workers because they saw that many of the underserved children and families they worked with could not access the resources needed to address concerns or to help children thrive, and identified a solution for this system-wide problem. OCH has helped more than 13,000 children and families across Massachusetts. OCH’s mission is to provide the missing resources at-risk youth, foster children and underserved families involved in the juvenile court and child welfare systems urgently need whenever those supports are not available elsewhere.
NOON
Syracuse, NY
Amount granted: $13,202
Grant year: 2022
Grant category: Human Services
$13,202 to support the revision, expansion and production of its 80-page educational booklet Neighbor to Neighbor, Nation to Nation: Reading About the Relationship of the Onondaga Nation with Central New York, USA.
Organization: The Syracuse Peace Council is a locally based grassroots peace and social justice organization founded in 1936, which educates, agitates and organizes for social change. Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (NOON), a project of the Syracuse Peace Council, was formed in 1999 to support the sovereignty of the Onondaga Nation (a nation in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy), their Land Rights Action and collaborate with them on environmental protection and restoration. NOON joins the Onondaga Nation’s call for justice, reconciliation and healing, through educational projects, relationship building and advocacy.
Promly
Morristown, NJ
Amount granted: $25,000
Grant year: 2022
Grant category: Human Services
$25,000 to support the launch of the Promly app in the spring of 2022 that aims to address the mental health and wellness of teens and young adults.
In response to a looming mental health crisis and massive increase in teen suicides that started well before the pandemic, Promly joined with Gen Z themselves to imagine a solution that doesn’t wait for a crisis, but instead proactively “meets teens where they are at” – on their smartphones. Promly is a social enterprise that aims to unify a generation by empowering human connectedness and providing holistic support and education for GenZ in places they naturally gravitate to, both online and offline.