#SummerOfPurpose: Kalgaal Issa

Our #SummerOfPurpose blog series followed this year’s Cleveland Foundation Summer Interns and Porter Cleveland Fellows as they spent 11 weeks working with Cleveland-area nonprofit and public sector organizations. In today’s blog, we hear from Kalgaal Issa, a Porter Cleveland Fellow who worked with the Cleveland Leadership...

Roll out the red carpet for MANChild: March 23rd @ 6:30 p.m.

Lights. Camera. Action!  Join us on March 23 for the Cleveland premiere of the film MANChild, written by Cleveland MLK high school student, Earlaina Kemp and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (yes, the writer/director of Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story). Last year, nearly 1,000 Cleveland-area students submitted scripts to the...

Home Grown Food

Lately I have been reflecting on the following points related to the topic of the locally grown foods: As a region we spend $7,000,000,000 a year on food. Yes! 7 BILLION dollars yet less than 1% of that goes to local farmers and producers Local food purchases re-circulate money back into the regional economy Food is typically moved...

Our grantees make us proud

The documentary PolyCultures: Food Where We Live  is set to screen March 25 and 26 at the Cleveland International Film Festival. One of our grantees, the New Agrarian Center, partnered with LESS Productions, to produce the film. The documentary  highlights a lot of the innovative work being done around Northeast Ohio to grow a more...

Scenes from a film festival

I am privileged to be a judge for the Independent Shorts Awards for the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) this year. This is the 33rd festival and, as anyone who has gone knows, it is a fabulous event for the city, as it grows each year. Two attendance records have been broken so far, and CIFF hopes the festival will reach a...

The rules of community organizing

Neighborhoods are composed of homes, businesses, schools, people, families, local government, and institutions.  When these components are effectively marshalled, a strong and healthy community is the result.  Lately I have been thinking about the role grassroots community organizing plays in this process of building strong...

#CIFF41: Putting the Lens on Global Health

The 41st Annual Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) kicks off today! The Cleveland Foundation has proudly supported the festival for decades, contributing nearly $2.3 million since 1981. As part of our support this year, we’re excited to present the CIFF Global Health Competition!The Global Health Competition, now in its fourth...

Karen Bartrum Jansen

216.615.7178 | Email kBartrum [Enable Javascript to send an email] Karen Bartrum Jansen joined the Cleveland Foundation more than 10 years ago. She currently works in Grants Management, helping donors and grantees through the foundation’s systems and processes.  Prior to joining the foundation, Karen worked in various sales and...