WHERE WE WORK
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Boys and Girls Club of Greater Victoria
Grant Project: Growing Skills
Funding Details: $15,000 per year for two years
The Growing Skills project is more than just planting seeds or tilling soil; it is about growing skills, leadership and self-esteem in participants. Experiential programs have proven an effective way to introduce youth to environmental issues, food security and food. The quarter-acre garden, designed and established by youth, not only produces fruits and vegetables, but supports regional biodiversity. Youth learn about soil biology and fertility, how to fix a broken tool, and how to be part of an effective team. This project will help youth develop transferable skills and provide work experience specific to agriculture, landscaping and environmental restoration.
Grant Project: Strengthening Food Security for Youth with Developmental Disabilities
Funding Details: $15,000 per year for two years
In this project, Community Living Victoria (CLV) will tackle food security in a holistic way with youth who have developmental disabilities and/or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a holistic way, such that the youth can reduce the impact food insecurity and poverty may pose in their teen years and adult lives. Youth will engage in skill-building activities, learn about the various agencies locally where they can access food in times of need, build networks, and “give back” to other vulnerable members of their community. This will be done through various volunteer opportunities, equipped with knowledge they have gained and using skills they are mastering.
LifeCycles and Capital Region Food and Agriculture Initiatives Roundtable (CR-FAIR)
Grant Project: Youth Flavour
Funding Details: $15,000 per year for two years
Youth Flavour is making space for youth voices and vision, and support for youth engagement in food action and change projects across the Capital Region. A Youth Food Security Animator and Youth Leaders Team will work to educate, enthuse and inspire the youth about food issues and get them involved in food security action projects (gleaning, gardens, farm2school, community kitchens, feasts, etc) across the region. The Youth Animators will empower youth to contribute to innovative solutions around food insecurity, and will work to bring their vision and voices to a wide range of programs, planning and decision making tables in the CRD region.
Grant Project: Native Plants & Garden Program
Funding Details: $15,000 per year for two years
Strengthening Roots (Year 1) and Blossoming Out (Year 2): A Youth Empowerment Food Systems Project at ȽÁU, WELṈEW school that works with aboriginal youth on school grounds and beyond through experiential inquiry based education. The youth have opportunities to co-create food systems in areas of their choosing which include: school gardens, native plant propagation, ecological restoration, reef net fishery, clam gardens, smoking salmon, pit cooking, and feasting. Students will choose an artistic medium to express and celebrate their food systems stories with other youth.
Pacific Centre Family Services Association
Grant Project: Skookum Skillz for Youth
Funding Details: $12,000 per year for two years
The mission of Skookum is to provide a safe and supportive environment that creates opportunities for youth to gain employment experience and life skills while contributing to the development of a sustainable, food secure community. The goals for Skookum are socially focused in providing youth (aged 16 to 22) with an inclusive, healthy and safe environment to gain employment and life skills as well as on-the-job training, mentorship and support. Through the youth’s participation in the café, Skookum seeks to provide opportunities for experiential learning that empower, foster confidence and build self-esteem while educating the youth about food security, production and distribution.
Victoria Sexual Assault Centre
Grant Project: Resisting Violence Through Food Justice and Social Action
Funding Details: $13,000 per year for two years
The Resistance to Violence Through Food Justice and Social Action Project is for youth to explore the connections between gender-based violence, colonization and food justice. The 2 year project involves: canning and preserving salmon; a camp to explore topics of food justice, sexualized violence, and social action; 6-8 teach-outs with local organizations and individuals; 6-8 cooking and dialogue classes; and the development of 8-10 social actions. Participants will have the opportunity to explore: a) their experiences of power, oppression/inequity, privilege; b) connections between gender-based violence, colonialism and food justice; and c) how we can take responsibility for creating personal, social and systemic change to promote healthy relationships and inclusive communities through social action and food justice. Participants in the first year can become youth facilitators in the second year.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Grant Project: ISAA Girls’ Developmental Basketball Academy
Funding Details: $10,000 per year for two years
Participants will be exposed to numerous techniques and activities which aim to develop essential athletic skills needed for the sport of basketball. Individual skill development, intramural and tournament games will be organized. Participants will be taught in a cooperative environment, by a qualified staff that will stress discipline, sportsmanship and fun. Enrichment skills to prepare for personal achievement and academic success and tutoring in the areas of English, reading and mathematics will be provided during the school year and also the summer. All participants will be required to attend Leadership Development workshops and each will be assigned a mentor.
Legacy Youth Tennis and Education
Grant Project: Changing the Game
Funding Details: $50,000 per year for two years
The in-depth program targets disadvantaged and highly impressionable middle-school children, who benefit from Legacy’s ability to provide culturally relevant coaches, a program-specific Achievement Coach, and a player pathway that integrates children into high-level tennis clinics at Legacy, one of only eight USTA Regional Training Center in the nation. With support from the Horner Foundation, Legacy will meet community demand by adding the proposed program site(s).
Grant Project: Youth Bike Education & Empowerment Program (YBEEP)
Funding Details: $25,000 per year for two years
Neighborhood Bike Works uses bicycles as a tool to engage, educate, and empower Philadelphia youth. Through our Youth Bike Education & Empowerment Program (YBEEP), we offer over 1400 hours of programming each year that instills confidence, inspires adventure, and builds skills for future success. Over the past two years, we transformed our youth programs and operations to focus more concertedly on youth development. We will continue to serve Philadelphia youth through YBEEP, while enhancing job and leadership opportunities. This year we will also embark upon a relocation to a new storefront site that will bolster our approaches to youth and community engagement.
Grant Project: Athletic Capacity Initiative
Funding Details: $40,000 per year for two years
In response to developing a new Strategic Plan, our Athletic Capacity Initiative (ACI) was created to expand our fitness programming by adding a part-time Squash Coach, to supplement our Squash Directors and lead programming, and a new high performance Squash Director to increase existing revenue streams, create new revenue streams for squash, increase student capacity and present new opportunities to our students. The ACI will directly impact 130 full time students and, through our Affiliated Community Engagement Students Program (ACES), a recruitment and partnership tool of various limited exposure events, 250 additional students each year of the grant.
Cambridgeshire & Northamptonshire, England
Grant Project: Empower through Qualification, Unity, Inspiration, and Preparation for Life (E-QUIP)
Funding Details: $28,000 in the first year, $35,000 in the second year
Inspire Peterborough, in partnership with Peterborough YMCA Gym, will offer young people aged 12-18 a toolkit for life. E-QUIP will work with “children at risk” (Not in education, employment or training; disabled, over-weight or obese; affected by mental health/self-esteem issues; having long term health conditions), to provide a pathway of opportunity to gain meaningful qualifications and develop skills that would otherwise be out of reach. Inspiring them to become leading role models for their peers and in the greater community, providing the tools to apply for apprenticeships in the fitness and sports industry and igniting a passion for their future.
Grant Project: Kick Start
Funding Details: $27,250 in the first year, $27,330 in the second year
Romsey Mill will deliver sports development provisions for disadvantaged young people between the ages of 11 and 18, enabling them to take part in sporting activities, develop confidence and access support from our Youth Development Workers, to which they would not otherwise have access. Weekly sports activities and other events will enable us to form positive relationships with over 200 young people, providing advice, guidance and support with issues that affect their lives because of poverty, disadvantage and social exclusion.
Grant Project: Core Dancers
Funding Details: $34,972.00 per year for two years
Core Dancers will enable 380 young people form Corby, Northamptonshire, UK- an area of economic and social disadvantage- to access over 200 fun and physical dance classes with inspirational leaders, developing skills in street, hip hop and contemporary styles. Each year, 190 young people aged 12-18 will be supported across a nine-month period: performing at three Arts Slam showcases and creating a production with a nationally-known choreographer, while achieving Arts Award qualifications. Delivered by the Core at Corby Cube, an organisation recognized for innovation, quality and delivering positive outcomes for young people in challenging circumstances through creative activities.
San Francisco East Bay, California, USA
Grant Project: SPARK Girls
Funding Details: $15,000 per year for two years
BYA “SPARK Girls” project focused on empowering 350 young girls (called “SPARK Girls”) ages 10-19 and improving their personal health. SPARK Girls will participate in the following workshops: 1) Sex Education and Body Image; 2) Birth Control 101, including Abstinence; 3) Tobacco, Marijuana, and Other Drugs; 4) Nutrition; 5) Positive v. Negative Relationships; 6) Dating Abuse and Violence; 7) Goal-Setting; 8) Meditation; 9) Self-
Defense; and 10) College/Career. In addition, SPARK Girls will be exposed to the Top 5 STEM careers and will have the options to participate in a Robotics camp, an Applications camp, and a Space Camp.
Grant Project: Youth Environmental Academy (YEA)
Funding Details: $15,000 per year for two years
The Ecology Center’s Youth Environmental Academy (YEA) is a green leadership development program for young people ages 14- 18. YEA offers structured, paid internships to 30- 35 youth per year. YEA’s three-tiered program starts with environmental literacy training in issues including food systems, alternative energy, climate change, waste and recycling, and water. YEA progresses to on-the-job training and mentorship, and culminates with a leadership role. Youth from low-income families are recruited from Berkeley Youth Alternatives (BYA) and Youth Works. We offer a fifteen-week session in the spring, and an intensive eight week session in summer, with leadership positions available for YEA graduates in the fall.
Grant Project: Youth Forestry Team
Funding Details: $7,500 per year for two years
We propose to improve access to healthy food by planting fruit trees in Oakland's low-income neighborhoods, to revitalize communities and to empower youth and community members to become stewards of their urban forest. We will run a youth program with our partner, the Sustainable Urban Design Academy (SUDA at Castlemont High School in East Oakland to offer urban forestry curriculum, with a focus on indigenous gardening methods and healthy food and medicinal plants, to reach over 100 students in SUDA courses. We will build a propagation greenhouse, which will enable us to produce over 1,000 fruit trees and other perennial edible and medicinal plants in the next 2 years for free distribution to Oakland’s low-income communities. We will continue our neighborhood tree plantings with the support of our youth apprentices and community partners, to directly engage 750+ youth and community members in planting fruit trees and participating in educational gardening and forestry workshops in their neighborhoods.
Grant Project: The Food Warriors Project
Funding Details: $7,500 per year for two years
Food Warriors is a youth development program that uses the lenses of African American history and food – its gardens, its preparation, its role in social justice - to cultivate, transform and activate young people to be healthy, strong and well-prepared for the 21st Century. Using our classroom, farm, and kitchen, our Saturday market operation, and exposure to novel experiences and increasing opportunities to lead, the two-year program is designed for focused individual development and collective growth; pursuit and demonstration of, first, Proficiency in Urban Agriculture, Nutrition & Education, Micro-enterprise, and Leadership & Social Justice and, later, Mastery in one specialty.
Grant Project: Rooted in Resilience
Funding Details: $7,500 per year for two years
Through Planting Justice, students: a) learn to transform underused community spaces into edible gardens, providing the freshest and most nutritional food in their community; b) experience life-enriching wellness practices such as culinary arts, gardening and nutrition education; and c) develop their STEM learning through social justice issues, ecology, and personal/community health and wellbeing. Our youth educators come directly from the communities we serve and develop close relationships and mentorship opportunities through weekly programming. Disenfranchised youth learn through designing, planning, installing, and maintaining gardens at schools, in their communities, and at the permaculture food forest at the Planting Justice Urban Resilience Farm.
Grant Project: Urban Farm Program for At-Risk Youth
Funding Details: $10,000 per year for two years
Urban Adamah will provide introductory urban farm experiential education to at-risk youth while working with participating schools to develop longer-term relationships and partnerships that leverage our physical and pedagogical assets to serve their students. Underserved public school students will experience a multi-sensory, multi-disciplinary hands-in-soil program that complements and enhances classroom teaching by nourishing students’ connection to themselves, each other, the food they eat and the natural world.
Grant Project: Urban Agriculture Institute
Funding Details: $15,000 per year for two years
Urban Tilth’s “Urban Agriculture institute” (UAI) is a farm, classroom, food distribution, youth employment and training program. The Institute constitutes four key components: a) The “Urban Ecology: Urban Agriculture and American Food Systems” course – includes in-class, accredited coursework co-taught by a school-district teacher and Urban Tilth staff. The course uses lectures, readings, discussions, cooking, practical lab experiences, and field trips to explore urban ecology, botany, nutrition and food, and environmental justice; b) The Institute’s “on the farm” component, students move outdoors, onto the 8,000 square foot farm, 20 raised garden beds and a greenhouse; c) In the program’s Community Supported Agriculture component, we distribute about 5,000 lbs of produce annually to school families; d) To continue their studies, students participate in our paid, intensive 100-hr Summer Youth Apprentice program.
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Boston Medical Center- Autism Program
Grant Project: Teens Engaged as Mentors (TEAM)
Funding Details: $30,000 in the first year, up to $20,000 matching in the second year
The BMC Autism Program seeks support to launch an innovative teen mentoring initiative for youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to address the complex challenges associated with ASD, adolescence, and adult transitioning. TEAM (Teens Engaged as Mentors) will empower diverse urban youth using a unique co‐mentorship model wherein mentor dyads (comprised of an individual with ASD and a neurotypical teenager) partner to mentor an “at‐risk” youth to facilitate strong leadership, self‐confidence, and positive community engagement. Taking place across the 2015‐2017 school years, key elements will include training and supervision for mentors, monthly community service project “hangouts,” and quarterly social events.
Ithaca, New York, USA
Grant: Project: Future Science Leaders
Funding Details: $10,000 per year for two years
Since 2013, the Sciencenter’s Future Science Leaders program has empowered middle school-aged youth by building critical thinking, communication and leadership skills around science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). During the next two years, we will increase the diversity of participants (including minorities underrepresented in STEM fields and participants from low-income families) by 20%. By forming new community partnerships, we will develop new sources of volunteers and in-kind staff assistance to increase program sustainability at lower cost.
2015-2017 GRANTEES
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