Summer of Purpose: Thomas Vodrey

Our #SummerOfPurpose blog series follows this year’s Cleveland Foundation Summer Interns as they reflect on 11 weeks spent working with Cleveland-area nonprofit and public sector organizations. In today’s blog, we hear from Thomas Vodrey, who spent his summer at the Cleveland Tree Coalition and Western Reserve Land Conservancy helping...

Summer of Purpose: Morgan Anderson

Our #SummerOfPurpose blog series follows this year’s Cleveland Foundation Summer Interns as they reflect on 11 weeks spent working with Cleveland-area nonprofit and public sector organizations. In today’s blog, we hear from Morgan Anderson, who spent her summer at the Down Syndrome Association of Northeast Ohio where she helped...

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 disease of nostalgia

On Feb. 24 at the Idea Center, Mohsin Hamid, a Pakistani writer and 2008 winner of an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, came back to Cleveland to speak on "Literature, Pakistan and 'The West.'" The lecture was part of the annual series co-sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation and the Baker-Nord Center for Humanities at Case Western Reserve...

Lead on, (Next Gen) leaders!

by Jill Paulsen, program officer Cleveland is a town where you can make a real difference. Where you can lead. Just ask our 30 newly minted Ladder to Leadership fellows, participants in a joint initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the Center for Creative Leadership.  The 16-month program is designed to develop...

Summer of Purpose: Geneviéve Carreño

Our #SummerOfPurpose blog series follows this year’s Cleveland Foundation Summer Interns as they reflect on 11 weeks spent working with Cleveland-area nonprofit and public sector organizations. In today’s blog, we hear from Geneviéve Carreño, who spent their summer at LatinUs Theater Company, helping  revamp their website and...

Steve Minter’s four words

As part of my training as a new Cleveland Foundation employee I watched a video of former CEO Steve Minter sharing his perspectives and highlights of the history of the foundation. I knew that Cleveland had the oldest community foundation (95 years old this year), and one of the nation’s largest.  Aside from those foundation facts, I...

Summer of Purpose: Raquel Cairns

Our #SummerOfPurpose blog series follows this year’s Cleveland Foundation Summer Interns as they reflect on 11 weeks spent working with Cleveland-area nonprofit and public sector organizations. In today’s blog, we hear from Raquel Cairns, who spent her summer at DANCECleveland working on Cleveland Dance Day.       Name: Raquel...

Of head scarves and at-risk children

This past Wednesday, two days after 11 Turkish artists and educators arrived to start Phase II of a year-long exchange program between Cleveland and Istanbul, the Turkish Supreme Court overturned a law permitting the wearing of head scarves in Turkish Universities. This law, passed last year by a fundamentalist-leaning Turkish...