The Cleveland Foundation board of directors has approved $9 million in November grants! Check out these highlights:
Housing services for Greater Clevelanders in need
The Cleveland Foundation has approved a $120,000 grant to Enterprise Community Partners to refine and expand its Housing First services. Housing First focuses on helping move individuals and families from the streets or shelters into their own apartments as quickly as possible, while providing wrap-around health and social services. This grant will support the continued progress in Enterprise’s goal to end chronic homelessness in Cuyahoga County.
The foundation’s November grantmaking also includes a $65,000 grant to the Lake-Geauga Habitat for Humanity to continue the organization’s expansion efforts in Lake County. The grant will support volunteer recruitment, staff expansion and service awareness, as Habitat focuses on addressing the affordable housing shortage in these counties through its mission of building homes, communities and hope.
Special programs supporting area students
The Cleveland Foundation awarded a $100,000 grant to Greater Cleveland Congregations, a non-partisan coalition of faith communities and partner organizations in Cuyahoga County working together to improve the quality of life in neighborhoods. This grant will help grow a successful program, which has engaged parents and caregivers in identifying needs in their neighborhood Cleveland Metropolitan School District schools and developing a strategy to address them.
A $9,288 grant to NewBridge Cleveland will allow it to pilot its after-school arts and technology program with seventh and eighth grade boys at Heritage Middle School in East Cleveland. The pilot program will focus on improving literacy skills through the nationally recognized A Cultural Exchange curriculum, which utilizes books with African-American authors and characters. The students will explore and interpret the books through mixed media art activities led by NewBridge staff.
The foundation also approved a $10,000 grant to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Cleveland for its Ready Readers Plus program, which helps K-3 Cleveland students improve basic literacy and math skills through customized after-school learning plans.
Central Kitchen culinary program for re-entrants
Among the $9 million in our November grants is a $200k grant to Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry for its Central Kitchen culinary training program for re-entrants, which was launched in 2011 with foundation support. This grant will fund increased wrap-around social services for program participants to improve graduation rates and graduates’ long-term employment success.
These are just a few of the grants approved by our board of directors in November. Learn more about our grantmaking here.
