Recent Grants |
|
|
2006 EMERGING GRANTEE COHORT (year two of three) Close to Home, Boston, MA $40,000. Second year of a three year grant. Close to Home was founded by community residents in response to an increase in domestic violence in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. It is based on the belief that institutions such as courts and law enforcement are the last to hear about, and poorly equipped to respond to, domestic violence. Citizens themselves need to address this problem at the community level. The Foundation supports its emerging Youth Team, founded by the son of a parent involved in Close to Home. The Youth Team researches the prevalence, perceptions, and impact of teen dating violence on the local community, creates media that addresses this issue, and facilitates follow-up educational workshops and informal discussions with their peers. |
Native Movement, Flagstaff, AZ $25,000. Second year of a three year grant. Native Movement is a collective of youth leadership projects on the Hopi and Navajo nations of Northern Arizona. Their projects sit at the intersection of economic, environmental, and cultural development. Youth have started a revenue-generating organic gardening business in nearby Flagstaff, are working with community elders to bring back building and farming practices that will increase environmental sustainability and economic independence, and are trying to prevent the commercial development of sites that are sacred to many indigenous tribes in the Southwest. |
On the Move, Napa, CA $40,000. Second year of a three year grant. On the Move builds and sustains the leadership of youth and young adults across the San Francisco Bay Area. The Foundation supports its V.O.I.C.E.S. project (Voice Our Independent Choices for Emancipation Support) in which foster care and emancipated youth advocate for policy changes that will improve the supports and opportunities that they receive, such as housing, education, and transportation. The project is run out of a youth-operated emancipation center, the first of its kind in the country. |
Women & Girls CAN, Chicago, IL $30,000. Second year of a three year grant. Women & Girls CAN (Collective Action Network) is a citywide collaborative of organizations and individuals empowering women to address policy- and system-level decisions that affect women, such as reproductive rights, domestic abuse, sexual harassment in schools, and the portrayal of women in the media. The Foundation supports its youth organizing project, FUFA (Females United For Action), which is a coalition of diverse girls and young women from across Chicago focusing the portrayal of females in the media. Recently, FUFA successfully organized opposition to a radio station’s offensive and misogynistic billboard advertisement in a campaign that received national attention. |
The Center for Court Innovation, New York, NY $40,000. Second year of a three year grant. The Center for Court Innovation acts as a think tank to help courts and criminal justice agencies aid victims, reduce crime, and improve public trust in the justice system. The Foundation supports its Youth Justice Board, a project in which youth study and propose solutions to juvenile justice and public safety challenges that most affect them, providing an important and credible voice of young people in the public debate about juvenile justice policy in New York City. In the first year—2004—members studied the challenges of youth returning home after confinement for juvenile delinquency. The second year, they focused on safety problems in local high schools. |
2006 ESTABLISHED GRANTEE COHORT (year two of five) Appalshop’s Appalachian Media Institute, Whitesburg, KY $30,000. Second year of a five year grant. Appalachian Media Institute trains teenagers to bring attention to the culture, stories, and issues of the eastern coalfields of Appalachia as a way to support their communities’ efforts to solve their own problems in a just and equitable way. Youth-produced films and recordings are aired locally and debriefed as a way to generate public dialogue about the issues raised. Participants’ media have also been broadcast across the country through public radio outlets and have brought congressional attention to the epidemic of teenage prescription drug abuse in rural areas. |
Global Action Project, New York, NY $90,000. Second year of a five year grant. Global Action Project (G.A.P.) is a youth media production organization founded to address two problems: 1) the inability of low-income youth of color to access technology and media production in order to voice their perspectives as critical thinkers and activists; and 2) the need to infuse public debate, especially as it is framed by mainstream media outlets, with younger and more diverse perspectives. G.A.P. provides youth with the knowledge, tools, and relationships they need to create powerful, thought-provoking media on local and international issues that concern them, and to use their media as a catalyst for dialogue and social change. |
Ifetayo Cultural Arts Facility’s Youth Ensemble, Brooklyn, NY $80,000. Second year of a five year grant. The Ifetayo Youth Ensemble is a leadership and performing arts organization for youth of African descent, in which participants discuss and research issues facing their community, and create original dance, theater, and spoken-word performances to address those issues. Ensemble topics have included domestic abuse, police brutality, and HIV/AIDS in the black teen community. A rites of passage program complements the performance component, with participants discussing their identity as youth, as people of color, and as witnesses, perpetrators, or victims of the social issues they address in their performances. |
InnerCity Struggle’s United Students, Los Angeles, CA $90,000. Second year of a five year grant. United Students is a youth organizing program that focuses on educational quality at four East Los Angeles high schools. Youth organizers undergo leadership and skills training in order to inform, listen to, and organize their peers in campaigns. Working in severely overcrowded schools, United Students was instrumental in securing construction funding for two new schools, and has also worked with school administration on increasing graduation and college-going rates. |
Youth Together, Oakland, CA $100,000. Second year of a five year grant. Youth Together trains and supports diverse teams of youth organizers to address problems in East Bay high schools, such as inadequate and unsafe school conditions, lack of appropriate academic resources and materials, and racially and economically segregated classrooms and schools. It trains diverse youth organizers in five high schools and has identified four areas of impact along a social change continuum: individual support and leadership development for its youth organizers; multiracial team development in order to build empowered and cohesive groups of young people; youth-led base-building in order to mobilize large numbers of youth and advocates; and institutional/policy changes as a result of the previous three strategies. |
| The Cricket Island Foundation | 780 Third Avenue, Suite 3400, New York NY 10017 | Site Designed by Merry+Valenzuela |