Building an Ecosystem for Community Safety in the District of Columbia

How we’re combining grants, strategic planning, and the power of collaboration to address gun violence

By Melen Hagos & Tonia Wellons

Earlier this week, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a declaration that many in the Greater Washington region have known and recognized for decades – gun violence is a national public health crisis.

“It is up to us to take on this generational challenge with the urgency and clarity the moment demands,” the Surgeon General wrote in the 40-page report. “The safety and well-being of our children and future generations are at stake.”

FROM THE NATIONAL NEWS TO THE LOCAL STREETS

In our region, the Greater Washington Community Foundation has long been committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of our local residents – particularly those most at risk – and has been at the forefront of efforts to prevent and respond to gun violence.

We acknowledge that while the issue of gun violence and public safety impacts everyone, there are those in our region who unjustly bear its impact more profoundly than others. Our most recent VoicesDMV report revealed that while everyone in our region deserves to feel safe and welcome in their communities, not everyone does.

Our work to achieve community safety and harm reduction – both across our region and in those areas most impacted – is one of the many ways we honor our commitment and work to create a just, equitable, and thriving community. With strong partnerships and expert guidance from national organizations like the Public Welfare Foundation, we have made a substantial impact over the years. Here are some key examples of our accomplishments:

In partnership with the District government, in 2013, we established a relief fund to aid victims and families affected by the Navy Yard shooting and to address long-term gun violence and mental health issues.

From 2013-2018, the Greater Washington Community Foundation partnered with the District Government and served as administrator of The City Fund, investing $15 million over five years as part of the District’s overall public safety and violence prevention agenda. This effort successfully spanned two political administrations—initially under Mayor Vincent Gray’s One City Action Plan and later repositioned under Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Safer Stronger Initiative.

In 2018, The Community Foundation mobilized local funders to support the implementation of Cure the Streets – a pilot program based on the Cure Violence methodology that worked to better understand the causes of gun violence in specific DC neighborhoods and empower local community organizations to be part of the solution.

More recently, we partnered with the Federal City Council and Peace for DC to host Stopping the Cycle of Violence, a community forum that explored proven solutions from across the country and the roles business and philanthropy leaders play in public safety.

LEADING WITH INTENTIONALITY & COLLABORATION

At The Community Foundation, we acknowledge it’s not enough to merely respond to community violence. Rather, it requires intentional coordination and strategic collaboration with community, local government, and philanthropic partners to proactively address the root causes and build stronger, safer communities.

As a result, we have made strategic decisions to support the development and funding of a comprehensive strategy aimed at enhancing harm reduction efforts in DC. Including:

HIRING A SENIOR FELLOW, COMMUNITY SAFETY & HARM REDUCTION

In partnership with the Public Welfare Foundation, we have hired a Senior Fellow for Community Safety and Harm Reduction. This full-time role is designed to provide leadership for the strategy and coordination of a cohesive and coordinated approach to community safety and harm reduction in the District of Columbia. We look forward to introducing the Fellow to you next month.

PARTICIPATING IN CF LEADS GUN VIOLENCE PREVENTION NETWORK

The Community Foundation was selected from community foundations nationwide to participate in the CF Leads Gun Violence Prevention Network. Through this year-long initiative, we will get to learn from leading experts and other foundations to help us catalyze and expand local gun violence prevention efforts by learning and adapting best practices from across the country. We are excited to collaborate with Peace for DC and the DC Office of the Attorney General as we take the opportunity to listen to and learn from each other and all the organizations involved in this important work.

MAKING INVESTMENTS IN HEALTH AND SAFETY

Months before the Surgeon General’s announcement, our Health Equity Fund recognized the connection between the increase in crime and violence in the District and the Fund’s objective to address the social and structural determinants of health.

In March 2024, the Fund committed to making $1 million in matching grants in partnership with the DC Office of the Attorney General and the Office of Neighborhood Engagement and Safety to address youth violence prevention through trauma-informed services, conflict and dispute resolution, mental health and wellbeing, and by assisting families dealing with the grief and trauma caused by these occurrences of violence.

BUILDING NEW STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS

In the coming months, we look forward to sharing more about a new strategic partnership that will seek to establish a coordinated body which spans political administrations to develop a long-term strategy for community safety, create a plan for implementation with accountability measures throughout, and establish best practices to align investments across philanthropy, government, and business for maximum impact.

Stay tuned for more details!

We are convinced that philanthropy, especially through community foundations, is ideally positioned to lead a unified response initiative, collaborating with local government, philanthropic entities, and community leaders.

We would love you to join us in this work to promote the overall safety and well-being of residents of the District of Columbia. Please contact us to learn more or get involved in this work.

Leaders of the Future: Building & Empowering Safer and Stronger Communities

In March 2024, The Community Foundation awarded $1 million in grants to organizations from across DC to help promote peacemakers who are working to empower children, youth and adults to build stronger, safer communities. These investments were made in partnership with the DC Office of the Attorney General and the Office of Neighborhood Safety & Engagement.

In honor of Gun Violence Prevention Month, The Community Foundation is excited to highlight the work and mission of these incredible organizations and the impact that they've had in empowering and uplifting their respective communities.

• Horton's Kids

  1) Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  We currently serve the Wellington Park, Stanton Oaks and Hunter Place communities.

  2) In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Horton’s Kids empowers children growing up in DC’s most under-resourced communities so that they graduate from high school ready for success in college, career, and life. We serve 600 children and their families living in Wellington Park & Stanton Oaks – neighborhoods that have been profoundly impacted by decades of disinvestment and barriers to opportunity.

  3) How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  Horton's Kids has a close partnership with the property management company of both properties that we serve and we have biweekly meetings that have a strong focus on the safety of the residents. Members of property security as well as MPD are also present during these meetings.

  4) How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  Horton's Kids is committed to involving and empowering community members in various ways. We understand that the perspectives, experiences, and feedback of community members are invaluable for creating a safe community for them. Some of the ways we involve the community members in the work we do is by creating opportunities for them to volunteer as well providing job opportunities. We also have an active Parent Advisory Council that assists us in making sure our parent's and community member's voices are heard and well respected. We understand that by involving community members in our processes, we build trust and accountability. Community involvement fuels innovation by tapping into the collective expertise and creativity of diverse stakeholders. By empowering community members to contribute to our work, we unlock new ideas, approaches, and opportunities for positive societal impact.

  5) What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  We're excited about the process. A lot of times people fall in love with the outcome whereas we've learned to fall in love with the entire process because there are so many learning opportunities for us all to learn from but that only comes when you go through the entire process.

  6) As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  Horton's Kids' dreams and aspirations for the future is for our participants, their parents and other community members to have a safe environment where everyone feels connected and everyone is moving on one accord toward the goal of peace and prosperity.

• Negotiation Works

  1) Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  We provide our services in the metropolitan Washington, DC area and surrounding areas in Virginia and Maryland. We serve individuals living in all eight Wards of DC, with a particular focus on Wards 7 and 8.

  2) In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Negotiation Works provides negotiation and self-advocacy training for people emerging from difficult and often traumatic situations–such as incarceration, homelessness, addiction, and domestic violence–so they develop the skills to navigate everyday challenges and live the next chapters in their lives confidently and productively.

  3) How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  We help build a stronger, safer community by teaching negotiation skills classes to people coming out of homelessness, incarceration, domestic violence, and other challenging life situations. Our curriculum addresses foundational negotiation strategies and self-advocacy skills, such as perspective-taking, identifying both parties’ interests, brainstorming potential solutions, crafting alternatives to negotiated agreements, active listening, and communicating effectively. The individuals who complete the Negotiation Works classes become better equipped to work through the daily frustrations that might otherwise fester and then escalate into gun or other violence. More broadly, when community members have the confidence and commitment to listen to one another, learn each other’s perspectives, and work alongside one another, they can--collectively--sort through their differences in a non-violent manner and contribute to the upward trajectory of the community as a whole.

  4) How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  We engage all our participants in shaping our curriculum. We solicit feedback from program participants about how the role plays and scenarios we use resonate with them and what uses they find in their own lives to implement negotiation strategies. We examine this input with an eye toward either making modifications to our existing scenarios or developing new ones.
  
  Participants who complete the Negotiation Works program are invited to become Ambassadors, an ongoing learning and service community for former class participants with opportunities to serve as informal advisors to Negotiation Works, problem-solving consultants to one another, and role models in the community as effective conflict resolvers and self-advocates. The Ambassadors influence the content, scope, and reach of our work. Their lived experience and stories offer invaluable contributions to how we shape the curriculum, leading us--for example--to provide more scenarios dealing with how returning citizens might negotiate for housing, or work through difficult situations in the workplace. Finally, they are beginning to develop their own dispute resolution programs for youth, through which they seek to teach negotiation strategies to youth, using their experiences to model how to work through conflicts by engaging in conversation, rather than by arguing or, worse, picking up a gun. Their influence is limitless as they spread their problem-solving skills in their families, workplaces, and broader communities.

  5) What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  We see unlimited potential in youth in our Negotiation Works community. They want to play a role in strengthening their communities, and we are excited about supporting them on their journeys.

  6) As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  My dream is to foster stronger, more resilient communities by sharing conflict resolution, problem-solving, and self-advocacy skills everywhere. When the members of a community have the tools to advocate for themselves and negotiate with each other, they are better able to achieve shared goals, create lasting relationships, and improve the stability of the community as a whole.

• BEST Kids

  1)  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  We primarily serve at-risk youth residing in Wards 4, 5, 7, and 8.

  2)  In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  BEST Kids empowers youth who are in foster care and at-risk to build healthy and successful futures through mentoring, college and career readiness, and life skills programs. We aim to ensure that youth who are in foster care or at-risk are meaningfully connected to positive adults and provided with the tools to feel confident and valued and placed on a path to achieve success as adults.

  3)  How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  Through regular engagement with positive adult mentors, access to academic resources, career readiness skills, cultural and recreational experiences, leadership opportunities, and mental health support, as well as providing that key stability to support our youth over the long term, BEST Kids addresses the systemic challenges and mitigates the risk factors associated with violence. Our program provides evidence-based solutions to equip our youth with the tools necessary to thrive as successful adults and become youth violence prevention advocates, which in turn will help to build stronger families and create safer communities.

  4)  How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  Community engagement and centering the voice of our youth is a critical element of our organization. We understand that involving the youth we serve in our decision making and programming is vital to the long-term sustainability of our program. The BEST Kids mentor relationship is set up to encourage our youth to name their goals, develop their unique identity, and explore their own potential. In 2020, we created the Youth Leadership Council, a group of mentees who meet bi-monthly to share ideas on how to improve programming and amplify the impact of our organization. Their participation and input have helped us to glean the issues and services that matter to them the most, allowing us to identify improvements and additions to our program. In addition, YLC members build their confidence and leadership skills by speaking and advocating before community leaders charged with making decisions that affect youth experiences in the child welfare system. By providing them with the opportunity to be better and do better, then we are succeeding in our mission of helping to build healthy and successful futures for foster and at-risk youth in the Washington, DC community.

  5)  What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  The foster and at-risk youth we serve are incredibly resilient people. They face tremendous challenges and trauma on a daily basis, yet by equipping them with the necessary tools, resources and exposure to positive opportunities that may not otherwise be available to them, we are placing them on a path to thrive and become the best version of themselves. Through our interaction and engagement with our youth, we see them taking the limits off what they thought was possible and embracing their futures with confidence, resilience, and tenacity.

  6) As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  As a leader, my dreams and aspirations for the future revolve around creating a safer, more peaceful community where every individual feels secure and valued. I envision a world where our collective efforts to prevent violence result in tangible, lasting change, fostering environments where our children can grow up without fear and our neighborhoods can thrive with mutual respect and support. I am committed to empowering our community with the resources, education, mentorship, and support needed to break the cycle of violence. By providing mentorship, we can guide and inspire our youth to reach their full potential and become positive role models for others. Through continued collaboration and innovation, I hope we can build a foundation of hope and resilience that will inspire future generations to cultivate a place of peace and unity.

• The T.R.I.G.G.E.R. Project

  1)  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  We serve all of DC

  2) In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  We are preventing gun violence through the intersectionality of positive youth development and public health.

  3) How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  We provide economic opportunities to all youth that we serve and encounter as the CDC reports that economic opportunity is a protective factor that lessens the likelihood of youth violence victimization and perpetration.

  4)  How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  The T.R.I.G.G.E.R. Project recognizes that the communities that we serve already possess the power necessary to prevent the spread of gun violence. In this light, we include them in our vision and strategy as experts. We inform our people on how to address gun violence through a public health lens as education is the first step to transformation and systemic reform.

  5)  What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  We are most excited that our youth are the long-term plan and approach to preventing future gun violence from spreading. Working with our youth, as leaders of today, equips them to design and implement the sustainable strategies necessary to see a world present in health equity and absent from gun violence.

  6)  As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  We envision a world absent from the disease of gun violence led by public health voices.

• Mother's Outreach Network

  1) Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  We serve residents citywide, with a special focus on communities with high concentrations of poverty in wards 5, 6, 7 and 8.

  2) In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Our mission is to engage Black mothers in the struggle for family preservation through transformation of family and government laws, policies and practices from punitive to empowering.

  3) How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  We use the following power building strategies for system’s transformation: Community engagement, research, and mobilization; policy advocacy; and legal information, representation and other programs.

  4) How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  Our organization engages community members through training, engagement in policy advocacy, and uplifting their voices to speak truth to, and push the levers of power. Our community engagement, research, and mobilization center the expertise of the community. We show up to support community members in visioning change, crafting solutions and advancing them in the local legislative and executive branches as we seek to defend them and shrink carceral systems that ensnare their families.

  5) What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  We believe strong families build strong futures for youth and their communities. We are excited about building a guaranteed income with a future of economic security for families where youth can grow and thrive and focus on supporting one another. If we pass policies like guaranteed income for youth, which is possible in the capital of the wealthiest nation on earth, their futures and those of their communities, will be secure and free of violence.

  6) As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  I want to see the elimination of poverty in the District of Columbia through a guaranteed income. We’d like to strengthen the existing safety net and to build new ones. we seek to do so through continued power building and strategic partnerships and execution!

• Paso Nuevo - GALA Hispanic Theatre

  1) Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  Paso Nuevo serves youths from DC, with most students coming from the Columbia Heights neighborhood where the theatre is located, Mount Pleasant, Adams Morgan, Petworth, U Street, Brightwood, and Sixteenth Street Heights.

  2) In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Paso Nuevo is a community-based performing arts program that provides low-income and multicultural youth with critical life and job skills in a creative, bilingual environment. Through Paso Nuevo, Latino youth ages 14-19 have a safe space in which to explore and take pride in their linguistic and cultural heritage, improve literacy and communication skills in both English and Spanish, discover their creative voice, gain valuable academic and job skills, and develop the tools necessary to engage more successfully in their schools and communities.

  3) How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  GALA Theatre provides a safe space for students to gather after school and during the summer, offering various performing-arts classes, technical training, and mentoring. Through participation in the arts, students in Paso Nuevo explore their cultures and identities and grow their academic skills and self-confidence. After training in several areas of theater, including artistic and technical fields, students engage in volunteer and work opportunities, gaining the leadership skills they need to advocate for themselves, their families, and their community. With internships and stipends, Paso Nuevo provides students an immediate economic benefit, as well as the experience and life skills to improve their short- and long-term career prospects, while imbuing in them a sense of commitment to the surrounding area. Students also learn techniques to manage day-to-day issues that may arise at home, school or in the community through conflict resolution sessions and meet with MPD officers to foster improved relations with the police. Three times a year participants present a free bilingual performance for the surrounding community.

  4) How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  GALA Hispanic Theatre’s free Paso Nuevo afterschool program draws in students from around DC to participate in arts classes, technical training, and mentoring. GALA also invites community members to free Paso Nuevo performances on its mainstage at the end of the Winter, Spring and Summer sessions. The public is engaged in a talkback with students, who share their experiences in the program. The theater also opens its doors to families in January for Three Kings Day, with a nativity procession and play, music, dance, live animals, and free gifts for all children. Additionally, Paso Nuevo students lead the community in a free public celebration of Day of the Dead in the Columbia Heights green.

  In the area of community safety, Paso Nuevo students survey and interview community members about their experiences of crime and violence and their opinions on solutions, while sharing safety information through podcasts and social media. GALA also collaborates with other community organizations throughout the year, and hosts free community events. Sharing Latino theater and the arts with the youth in our afterschool programs and the surrounding community is central to GALA’s mission of promoting and preserving Hispanic culture and heritage.

  5) What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  It is thrilling to see how this generation of youth is so actively engaged in social issues and understands that the problems that affect any group impact us all. Their passionate pursuit of information and their persistence in holding power to account are promising indicators of the progress toward equity and opportunity they will spearhead in DC.

  6) As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  I hope to see GALA Theatre and the arts continue their role in deepening our youths’ understanding of themselves, their empathy with others, and their pride in their culture and its place in the wider community.

• DC Police Foundation

  1) Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  The Foundation supports and coordinates the Washington Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) youth and community outreach programs taking place throughout the city. We are especially proud of our DC PAL programming, taking place in Wards 5, 6, 7 and 8. Our DC PAL football team currently serves: Benning Park Deanwood Marshall Heights Lincoln Heights Projects Clay Terrace Projects

  2) In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  The D.C. Police Foundation (DCPF) works to provide resources for the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in support of their mission to make D.C. a safer place to live, work, and visit. DCPF seeks to accomplish their mission by: I. Maintaining and spearheading youth programs in D.C.’s most challenging neighborhoods to enhance police and community relationships. II. Supporting the unmet needs of the MPD, identified by the Chief of Police, through both in-kind and financial assistance.

  3) How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  Our organization helps build a stronger and safer community through our unique offering of varied youth programming. For example, by engaging youth as young as 4-5 years old in programs like Officer Friendly and the Side by Side Band, we are encouraging them to have open conversations with law enforcement officers, to share their stories and to ask questions. By engaging with youth in this open manner, the kids learn from the officers, but the officers learn even more from the youth. Officers learn the needs of the community and can better serve each neighborhood based on what they hear from their mentees. By working together and creating that relationship, everyone feels more comfortable and can better communicate in times of need as well. We have also had many youth become MPD officers over the last 10 years, wanting to make a positive difference in their own neighborhood.

  4) How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  Our organization works directly with community members, schools, businesses, youth and the police department to develop and enhance programming that is felt to be most needed and beneficial to the community. The Youth Advisory Council is incredibly important, where youth meet regularly with the Chief of Police, sharing their visions and goals for police-community partnerships. All programs also include a component of financial literacy, so that we can teach youth and their families how to open bank accounts, budget, save and even invest. We feel that this is incredibly important to build a strong workforce and set all program youth up for success and financial independence.

  5) What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  The youth who participate in our programming are so passionate about making the city a better place and about creating positive change within their neighborhoods. Listening to their ideas, dreams and then watching them work collaboratively with their law enforcement officer mentors on next steps to realize their goals has been incredibly exciting.

  6) As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  We hope to continue to build out and expand our youth engagement programming, building positive relationships between law enforcement and the community. This will allow for the continuation of the youth program pipeline into career paths not only in public safety, but with partner organizations within the city. We hope to inspire those who live in the city to work hand in hand with law enforcement to make the city a safer place for everyone to live, work and visit.

• Network for Victim Recovery of DC

  1) Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  All communities/neighborhoods in DC!

  2) In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  We create equitable healing and dignified experiences for survivors of crime by providing free, trauma-informed advocacy, therapeutic, and legal services in conjunction with strategic litigation, policy advocacy, and education to transform existing responses to harm.

  3) How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  Survivor-defined justice is the bedrock of NVRDC and guides everything that we do. This means that justice does not look the same for every survivor. NVRDC staff support each survivors unique vision and their chose path towards that goal. We do not say or believe that "we did what was best for our client" That assumes that NVRDC know what is best for them and not themselves.

  4) How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  NVRDC believes that we empower folks by providing them with the tools they need to succeed such as learning how to be trauma-informed. By bringing trauma training to as many diverse sectors as possible, we are one step closer towards ensuring every crime victim has a dignified and empowered experience wherever they may turn for help.

  5)  What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  Youth in our community seem to stand up and be a voice for those who are receiving any sort of injustice. They are not scared to speak up and put actions in place to fight for what they believe in.

  6) As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  NVRDC's goal is to create trauma-informed spaces everywhere possible.

• Life Pieces to Masterpieces

  1) Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  Life Pieces To Masterpieces serves Black and Brown boys and young men, ages 3 to adulthood, in Wards 7 and 8 of Washington, DC.

  2) In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Life Pieces To Masterpieces develops character and leadership, unlocks potential, and prepares Black and Brown boys and young men to transform their lives and communities, with creative expression and “each one teach one” mentoring at the core. In a world that devalues and threatens the lives of Black and Brown men young and old, LPTM provides refuge for boys to break through negative self-images, tell authentic stories of their life experiences, and build strong bonds of brotherhood.

  3) How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  LPTM provides over 1,200 hours per year of comprehensive out-of-school-time programming after school, during the summer, and on Saturdays. All programming supports the social-emotional, academic, emotional, physical, and civic development of our boys and young men. LPTM programming is entirely free for all youth and families and includes nutritious meals/snacks and door-to-door transportation in LPTM-owned vehicles between youths’ schools, LPTM’s programming site, and home each day, removing the two most frequently-cited barriers to accessing out-of-school-time programming nationwide: cost and safe transportation (Afterschool Alliance, 2022). Youth at LPTM–from age 3 into adulthood–have a safe, loving environment to express themselves; teach and uplift others as mentors; navigate societal barriers; and contribute positive change in their communities. Our boys see their futures beyond how society attempts to define them, surrounded by mentors–many of whom look like them, grew up in their neighborhoods, and understand their challenges and aspirations. Through their storytelling, self-expression, arts, leadership, and advocacy, our boys and young men change the world’s understanding of our shared humanity. LPTM boys and young men regularly speak up and speak out about issues important to them.

  LPTM is a part of three major coalitions: the DC OST Coalition, which advocates for public and private local investment for community-based out-of-school-time programs; the DC Arts Education Alliance, which advocates for funding and access to the arts for all DC youth, and especially those from marginalized communities; and the Black Coalition for Health, which began as the Black Coalition Against Covid, fighting to get more resources and better, more trustworthy information into Black communities. LPTM’s authentic community relationships enabled us to aid families with important questions, while our commitment to always having a young person in every coalition meeting brought important insights to the coalition’s national leadership. LPTM’s coalitional work allows us to share ideas, best practices, youth voice, and advocacy strategies with 35+ local community-based organizations. Through this work, LPTM has been connected with two additional national organizations, Afterschool Alliance and MENTOR, where our young people have consistently reached national audiences to share the authentic stories of their live, become thought leaders advancing the importance of mentorship and safe afterschool spaces, and build a new narrative about Black and Brown boys and young men.

  4) How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  LPTM’s growth as an organization has been co-designed by our first seven boys, and subsequent Apprentices over 28 years, together with families, schools, and neighborhoods in our communities East of the River. Black-led since our 1996 founding, our staff and leadership team have strongly reflected the DC neighborhoods that we serve. Our team has lived experience that helps our young people connect, feel understood, and develop a sense of belonging within our programs. LPTM youth are planners, decision-makers, and active partners in their own learning. As they grow in the program, they play a part in helping to shape each other’s lives as they become mentors and role models for their peers.

  LPTM’s unique "each one teach one" mentoring model–woven throughout our programming continuum–both fosters leadership skills in mentors and provides a nurturing and relatable support system for mentees: Older peers serve as exemplars to their younger peers, providing social-emotional and academic support in classrooms in which they themselves were once enrolled as young boys. As mentors who share many of the same experiences, challenges, and aspirations as their mentees, and supported by their own peer and staff mentors, our young men develop confidence in their innate goodness and a foundation of self-belief. Through these practices, LPTM youth grow to understand their innate potential and continue to guide the work of LPTM in new ways. LPTM youth and alumni also co-facilitate our signature “Color Me Community” interactive workshop series, which guide participants to explore equity, inclusion, and implicit biases in a safe environment that opens the way to experiencing themselves and others as integral and valued parts of shared humanity.

  5)  What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  At Life Pieces To Masterpieces, we have always believed that it is not about us giving power to our boys and young men, but, rather, we believe that they have the innate creative ability to transform their lives and to enact positive change in their communities and their world. What excites me is that every single one of our boys and young men, when given the right opportunities, have the wherewithal to change challenges into possibilities. All that’s needed is a safe place and space for them to realize their own innate power.

  6) As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  My dream is captured in the vision of Life Pieces To Masterpieces. It is that our boys and young men become catalysts for positive change throughout their communities, their country, and the world, and that they ultimately have the self-determination and confidence to chart out their own course in their lives.

• Access Youth

  1) Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  Access Youth serves at-risk middle and high school students in DC’s wards 6, 7, and 8.

  2) In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Access Youth’s mission is to keep vulnerable youth in school and out of the justice system through mediation, restorative justice, and positive youth development.

  3) How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  For 15 years, Access Youth has helped build a safer community with restorative justice-based interventions to prevent violence among at-risk students. Access Youth delivers transformative programming to mitigate the impact of unresolved trauma, systemic racism, gender disparities, and cyclical poverty on student attendance, behavior, and academic performance. Access Youth’s full-time on-site Program Managers deliver individualized supports to 1000+ students yearly across our eight partner schools.

  4) How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  Access Youth’s core programs––Restorative Justice in Schools and Truancy Prevention–– keep students engaged in their school communities and empower them with critical life and leadership skills. Our programs are rooted in equity––we lift up the voices and choices of the youth we serve. We meet each individual student where they are, with evidence-based supports and a trauma-informed approach that works to empower each individual to become the role models they deserve.

  5) What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  Access Youth sees the potential in each and every one of our students. Their exciting accomplishments show the impact of our programs. Just last year we had 200+ Access Youth students on Honor Roll, ALL of our seniors graduated, and two of our students served as President and Vice President of the student body. We are inspired by their dedication and excited for their ongoing accomplishments.

  6) As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  Every day, Access Youth actively works toward our dream: an equitable education system where every student receives the support they need to stay in school, learn to manage their emotions, and resolve conflicts without violence. We envision our middle and high school conferences growing into an integrated network of students that encompasses students across all DCPS schools and empowers students to advocate for themselves and restorative practices throughout their communities.

• Building Futures

  1) Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  Ward 8 & Ward 1

  2) In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Building Futures is a year long youth empowerment program designed to equip young individuals with the skills, knowledge, and confidence needed to thrive in the modern workforce and become future leaders in their communities. Through a carefully structured three-phase approach, participants will engage in educational, practical, and entrepreneurial activities that foster personal growth, professional development, and community impact.

  3) How does your organization help build a stronger, safer community?

  Our youth co-op program can help build a stronger, safer community in a number of ways: Building Futures programs provide young people with valuable skills and experiences that will help them become more responsible and engaged members of the community. By providing young people with positive outlets for their energy and creativity, our program can help reduce the likelihood of them engaging in risky behaviors or criminal activities. Engaging in meaningful activities and building positive relationships can steer young people away from negative influences and towards a more positive path. Youth who participate in co-op programs often become more engaged in their communities. They may volunteer, participate in community events, or take on leadership roles, all of which contribute to building a stronger and safer community. Engaged youth are more likely to care about the well-being of their community and take action to improve it. Lastly , building future leaders. Our program can help identify and nurture the leadership potential of young people. By providing opportunities for youth to take on responsibilities, make decisions, and solve problems, these programs can help develop the next generation of community leaders who will work to make their communities safer and more vibrant. Overall, youth co-op program play a valuable role in building stronger, safer communities by empowering young people, fostering social connections, reducing crime, promoting community involvement, and developing future leaders.

  4) How does your organization involve and empower community members in the work that you do? Please help us understand how this is important to your work.

  By actively involving and empowering community members in their work, a youth co-op program can build stronger connections, foster collaboration, and create a more vibrant and inclusive community that benefits both youth participants and residents alike.

  5) What excites you about the future for youth in your community?

  The future is exciting for youth because of the opportunities for technological advancement, global connectivity, social change, entrepreneurship, education, diversity, inclusion, and climate action. With their energy, creativity, and passion, young people have the potential to shape a brighter and more sustainable future for themselves and generations to come. Lastly, Building a solidarity economy by participating in the cooperative movement to transform our perspectives and practices in economics.

  6) As a leader, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  Creating intentional spaces for healing is essential to empower us to generate prosperity for the benefit of future generations. Safe communities with minimal crime.

Building Towards Belonging: Voices DMV Report Highlights Critical Needs & Strategic Priorities for the Greater Washington Region

Almost half of DMV residents are struggling or suffering in their overall well-being, according to the latest Voices DMV Community Insights Report.

The report - which was released this week -- provides an update on the state of our region, including key regional challenges and insights from a comprehensive survey conducted by The Community Foundation in partnership with Gallup and its Center on Black Voices.

“This is not just data for data’s sake,” shared Tonia Wellons, President & CEO of The Community Foundation. “This data is a reflection of what we can do better – what our community requires of us. It provides a roadmap for how we can shift what we’re doing – as funders and as community and nonprofit partners -- to better meet their needs.”

First launched in 2017, VoicesDMV is a community engagement initiative designed to help philanthropy, community leaders, policymakers, and others better understand the diverse experiences of the people who live and work in the Greater Washington region.

This year’s report marks the third iteration of VoicesDMV. Data from the previous iteration was gathered just weeks prior to the  COVID-19 pandemic that exacerbated pre-existing socio-economic disparities across the region.

Nearly four years later, the latest VoicesDMV Community Insights Report shows that many of those disparities are still prevalent – and in some cases have widened further in the aftermath of the pandemic.

According to the report, at some point during the past year, half of residents in the DMV worried about not being able to pay their rent or mortgage. Meanwhile, among Black and Hispanic residents, more than 1 in 3 have run out of money for food. Click here to view the Full Report

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The report surveyed more than 2,800 residents across DC, Maryland, and Virginia – with an oversampling among communities of color across the region, including several neighborhoods identified by The Community Foundation as priority neighborhoods.

“This report is important because we need to make sure we’re all singing from the same sheet of music,” Camille Lloyd, Director of the Gallup Center for Black Voices shared at a launch event for the report. “No matter how well we’re doing as a region, if we don’t understand who’s being impacted negatively – and how they’re being impacted – we won’t know who is being left behind.”

Lloyd provided insights on the survey’s methodology and moderated a panel discussion with members of The Community Foundation’s Community Investment team about key takeaways from the report.

“COVID really changed the conversation about ‘work’ and the employment space as we know it,” Dawnn Leary, Chief Program Officer at The Community Foundation shared. “On a philanthropic level, it’s forced us to re-examine how we invest in workforce development and where.”

According to the latest report, nearly three in four residents described available job opportunities as a barrier to achieving their financial goals. At the same time, residents also identified a number of critical barriers to finding and keeping those jobs including access to public transportation, credit history, and access to childcare.

Leary is the chief facilitator of Reimagine – formerly the Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative. The initiative recently shifted its focus following a robust listening and learning discovery process with community members about the needs of the community – many of which were outlined in the report.

“When we talk about impact, we need to get out of the tendency to only focus on programmatic outcomes,” Leary explained, outlining one of the reasons for the shift. “Instead, we need to prioritize how we are responding to the actual needs on the ground.”

Jennifer Olney, Senior Community Investment Officer with the Partnership to End Homelessness shared how her initiative is advocating for more funding to meet one of the most urgent of those needs – access to affordable housing.

Olney shared how the growing number of residents struggling to pay rent has played out across the DMV, as the number of people experiencing homelessness in our region increased by 12% last year. This statistic had actually decreased during the pandemic, but has since reversed course as COVID relief and rental assistance programs expired and more residents find themselves struggling to get by.

“Like many challenges facing our community, homelessness is one issue where the public sector needs to be at the table and make the necessary investments,” Olney shared. “That’s why it’s critical for us to empower community members and those with lived experience and ensure that their voices and advocacy are heard.”

“We need to constantly ask ourselves how are we supporting and investing in the agency of people,” Leary added. “Not just listening to their voices and providing input, but finding ways to step back and let those who are closest to these issues lead.”

“Those who are living these experiences know what the solutions are – what they need is investment and support. They need to be the ones that are engaged in driving change in their community; not just philanthropy.”

“As you read this report, don’t just take it as another input for data,” Leary concluded. “Think about how this insight will change the way you work. How can you use it to change you interact with the community you serve.”

Following the panel discussion with members of the Community Investment team, Duc Luu, Director of Sustainability Initiatives/Journalism at the Knight Foundation moderated a panel discussion that dived deeper into other aspects of the report – specifically those related to the sense of belonging, social connections, and resident voice.

“A sense of belonging is more than just being seen or feeling included,” shared Vanessa Mason, Principal on the Building Cultures of Belonging team at Omidyar Network. “It means having a voice and an opportunity to use it to make demands on the society that they are a part of.”

“Belonging is more than aspirational,” Dr. Wendy Ellis, Director and Founder of the Center for Community Resilience at George Washington University added. “It’s something that is real and is measurable.”

According to Gallup and  the VoicesDMV Community Insights Report, a sense of belonging is the biggest predictor of whether residents are thriving. It also represents one of the biggest areas for improvement for our region – especially as residents look to their future. Just over half of residents expect living conditions in their communities to be ‘about the same’ five years from now, while about one in three expect them to them to be worse.

“We can’t create belonging for anyone else,” Dr. Ellis shared. “We can only create the conditions for belonging. That requires intentionality and investments that foster social cohesion – which over time develops into social capital and hope for a brighter future.”

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“I do this work because I believe that belonging cannot happen without power,” Allison Dunn-Almaguer, Executive Director of Washington Interfaith Network shared. “It’s about building agency – bringing people together across, race, religion, sexuality, and ethnicity to promote collective decision-making.”

Following the panel, Darius Graham, Managing Director of Community Investment, expressed The Community Foundation’s commitment to continue to build upon the community insights of the VoicesDMV Report by turning ideas into action. He shared information about the VoicesDMV Fellowship which will facilitate deeper engagement between The Community Foundation, residents, and organizations in priority areas to ensure authentic community voice is at the center of our work.

He also shared information about the 2024 VoicesDMV Community Action Awards. Started in 2020, the Community Action Awards provide microgrants to nonprofits working to make our region more equitable and inclusive by addressing issues and challenges highlighted in the Community Insights report.

Among the past Community Action Award Honorees were Erin McKenney, Executive Director of Just Neighbors and Lauren McDanell, VP of Strategy & Growth at SEED SPOT. Both recipients shared how the Community Action Awards allowed them to build a sense of belonging amongst the communities they serve.

“We hope that you leave this room today with a shared commitment to intentionality,” Tonia Wellons shard in conclusion. “May we glean what we can from this report and interrogate how it plays out in our communities and in the work that we do.”

“If we are to do this work effectively, it is imperative that we adapt to the needs of our community – we cannot keep doing the same things and expect different outcomes.”

“This report is only the beginning of our work – and we have a responsibility to our community to see that it’s carried out.”

Click here to see photos from the VoicesDMV Launch. For more information about VoicesDMV, visit www.voicesdmv.org

Leaders of the Future Spotlight: AsylumWorks Fellows Pioneer Revolutionary Program for Asylum Seekers

Etsegenet K., Health & Program Manager at AsylumWorks

During the month of May, The Community Foundation is highlighting individuals and programs that approach their work through a community-centered lens – especially those that uplift community voices and find community-centered solutions to systemic barriers.

This month, we’re pleased to highlight Etsegenet K., Awel A, and the Fellowship Program at AsylumWorks. The Community Foundation is proud to partner with AsylumWorks through our Health Equity Fund, which provides support to this and other programs.

For Etsegenet K, Health & Wellness Program Manager at AsylumWorks, helping asylum seekers adapt to life in a new country isn’t just her job – it’s her passion.

“I know what it feels like to receive the services and empowerment that I need to succeed in this country,” Etsegenet shared. “When I work with my community, I’m able to give back. It’s more than a job, to me.”

On any given week, Etsegenet provides critical support and case management to dozens of immigrants seeking asylum in the DMV – helping them access a range of resources to adjust to their new life in the United States. In doing so, she says she hopes to empower others to succeed in the same way that she was helped.

An AsylumWorks Case Manager meets with a client (photographed from behind, to protect the client’s privacy)

Back home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Etsegenet worked as a licensed practicing attorney, with a passion for human rights law. However, she was forced to seek refuge in the United States, after she began facing persecution for speaking out against the government.

In addition to the social and emotional challenges of leaving behind family and friends, Etsegenet faced professional and economic challenges, as she sought to establish her new life.

“It felt like I had to reinvent myself and forget everything I had back home,” she shared.

“So often, when asylum seekers come to the US, they are told that ‘USA’ stands for ‘You Start Again,’” Joan Hodges-Wu, Founder and Executive Director of AsylumWorks added, explaining some of the challenges that many of their clients face.

“Despite their wealth of experience, talent, and ambition, our clients are bombarded with messages that tell them their only professional options are driving for Uber or washing dishes. These jobs have a purpose, but they don’t offer economic mobility.”

From Client to Social Worker

Hodges-Wu founded AsylumWorks in 2016 – around the same time that Etsegenet came to the US. Today, the organization provides culturally and linguistically appropriate services to help asylum seekers and other underserved newcomers access the resources and support needed to integrate into their new communities and overcome systemic barriers.

Within a few years, word about AsylumWorks reached Etsegenet, who was able to utilize its services to get a job through career development and employment assistance programs.

Grateful for the help she received, Etsegenet continued to be involved with AsylumWorks, as a volunteer. Recognizing her passion and potential for AsylumWorks’ mission, in February 2020, Hodges-Wu hired Etsegenet to join the organization as paid, part-time employees – even though she didn’t have experience in social work.

Etsegenet celebrates her graduation from Columbia University's School of Social Work.

“Etsegenet’s love for our mission was palpable,” Hodges-Wu shared.

“It was easy to see that this was someone who could transform our organization and take our work to the next level.”

Etsegenet says it was that faith and confidence in her as a person and a professional that helped spark her love of social work. A year later, she was accepted into Columbia University’s Master of Social Work Program – one of the oldest and most prestigious programs in the country – with a full-ride scholarship for displaced people. After graduating in 2022, Etsegenet rejoined AsylumWorks, this time as a full-time therapeutic case manager as part of the Health & Wellness Program.

 “I don’t know if I would be doing social work if I hadn’t been an AsylumWorks client,” Etsegenet told us. “Their investment in me helped open my eyes to the beauty of social work. It’s hard and really demanding work – but it’s also been an incredible healing process for me. It’s such a blessing to provide others with the same services and empowerment that I was able to receive.”

Formalizing the Fellowship Program

Inspired by Etsegenet’s performance as a new employee, AsylumWorks formalized a Fellowship Program in January 2022 -- a year-long, full-time, paid, on-the-job professional training program to train former clients to work with current clients as therapeutic case managers.

Adoude Tokognon, another graduate of the Fellowship Program, who now works as a Therapeutic Case Manager at AsylumWorks.

As part of the program, fellows receive weekly individual and group supervision from licensed social workers, as they learn the basics of case management, mental health therapy, the asylum process, and social work.

“Within six months, most fellows not only are confident in their own abilities as case managers,” Hodges-Wu explained. “They also gain confidence within the organization – advocating for the needs of their clients; raising awareness about things within the organization that we could do to improve our services.”

As the organization has scaled, so has the Fellowship Program. Of the seven fellows who have graduated from the Fellowship Program, thus far, five of them have been promoted and still work at AsylumWorks.  

“Through this program, AsylumWorks is not only community-informed; we are also becoming more community-led.”

The Fellows’ presence has been wholeheartedly embraced by the communities that AsylumWorks serves. As former clients with lived experience and proficiency in native languages, Fellows have been able to quickly establish trusting relationships with incoming clients – without needing a third-party translator. By the end of first year, alone, the fellowship cohort had served more than 100 individuals and families from more than 30 countries.

The approach caught the attention of the US Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which recognized AsylumWorks’ Fellowship Program as an industry best practice in March 2023. The agency, which oversees refugee-serving programs nationwide, has since commissioned AsylumWorks to execute a series of webinars to help other organization across the country implement similar programming.

The graduation ceremony for the inaugural AsylumWorks Fellowship Program.

“I understand what people are going through,” Awel A., graduate of the inaugural fellowship cohort shared. “I am able to use my experience to help others transfer themselves from survival mode to stability.”

Like Etsegenet, Awel sought refuge in the US after facing political persecution in his home country of Ethiopia. Prior to that, Awel was a prominent constitutional lawyer who taught undergraduate law at a prestigious university for more than a decade.

“It’s frustrating,” Awel said of his experience coming to the US. “A lot of asylum seekers have transferrable knowledge and skills but they don’t have the opportunities to transfer them because they don’t have access to their profession, in this country.”

Upon arrival in the US, he quickly became connected with AsylumWorks – working with Etsegenet, who was his case manager, at the time.

Today, Etsegenet and Awel – who has since been promoted as the Legal Navigation Program Manager at AsylumWorks – are coworkers.

Awel, Legal Navigation Program Manager at AsylumWorks.

Unlike some Fellows, Awel doesn’t plan to pursue an advanced degree in social work – choosing instead to build upon his legal expertise to help AsylumWorks’ clients navigate the complex immigration system.

“To me, the Fellowship Program was an opportunity to learn about the US work culture, gain more experience and become more familiar with it – but also to give back to my community.”

“I was empowered as a client and as a fellow – now I have the opportunity to empower other people.”

“In the immigration space, it’s so easy to focus on the negative aspects of a system that is stacked against our clients,” Hodges-Wu shared. “But that is also why it is so important to cultivate pockets of light to remind us that change is possible, that opportunity still exists, and that with the right support, even newcomers facing significant obstacles have the ability to change the world.”

“Asylum seekers need to know how much they are valued,” Awel concluded. “They need my help – that is my passion.”

Empowering community voices and investing in community-led solutions to systemic barriers is an important aspect of The Community Foundation’s Strategic Vision. We are proud to support the AsylumWorks Fellowship program through our Health Equity Fund.

For more information about AsylumWorks, visit www.asylumworks.org/

New Community Listening Survey Shows DMV Residents Are Significantly Less Optimistic Now Than They Were in 2020

Worries about being able to pay rent or a mortgage in the Greater Washington region have soared; fewer residents believe changes where they live will benefit them

A new community listening survey conducted by Gallup in partnership with the Greater Washington Community Foundation shows that DMV residents are now significantly less optimistic about the future of the region than they were in 2020. DMV residents have become less positive in their views about who will benefit from changes in the area, and a staggering 85% of residents believe they have little to no influence on local government decision-making.

The number of residents who expect living conditions in the Greater Washington region to get “better” in the next five years dropped by nearly half, from 29% in 2020 to 16% in 2023, while the number of people who think living conditions will get “worse” in the region has increased from 24% to 32%. In 2020, 27% of respondents said changes in the area would benefit “more people like me,” but this is now down to 19%.

“Our last survey, conducted just before the pandemic, documented wide disparities in income and opportunity that were preventing many residents from accessing the region’s economic growth and prosperity. Today, many of these hardships remain, and have been exacerbated by the health and economic trauma of the past few years,” said Tonia Wellons, President and CEO of the Greater Washington Community Foundation. “Recognizing the challenges many people face, we’re redoubling our efforts to facilitate deeper engagement with residents and are investing in microgrants for individuals and organizations with ideas for improving neighborhoods to ensure every person has the opportunity to thrive.” 

The Voices of the Community (VoicesDMV): Community Insights survey is one of the only large-scale community listening and engagement tools in the region that seeks to understand how residents are experiencing key quality of life indicators across a wide range of topics: economic opportunity, wellbeing, safety, influence in our democracy, and general perceptions about livability in the region. Through VoicesDMV, The Community Foundation has committed to engaging our community every three years to help keep a finger on the pulse of the community by deeply and authentically listening to the voices, experiences, attitudes, and perceptions of people who are generally not heard from in philanthropy.

This year’s publication reveals that while the DMV is outpacing the growth of other northeast regions, and more than half of residents are thriving, many people still lack access to basic needs. Nearly one in five DMV residents say there were times in the past year when they didn’t have enough money to pay for healthcare or medicine or food for themselves or their family, while 11% say they were unable to provide adequate shelter. Black and Hispanic residents are more likely than other racial subgroups to report struggling to afford basic needs — including more than a third who say there were times in the previous year when they did not have enough money to buy food and more than a quarter who experienced not having enough money for healthcare or medicine.

“Economic precarity has been a consistent theme throughout Gallup’s and the Greater Washington Community Foundation’s research across pre- and post-pandemic measures, revealing inequalities that could persist or even expand if gone unaddressed as the DMV region continues to change,” said Camille Lloyd, Director of the Gallup Center on Black Voices. “These findings demonstrate the need for programs and services that help residents catch up and keep up financially, move up the economic ladder, and ultimately build wealth.”

Additionally, worries about being able to pay rent or a mortgage in the DMV have soared since 2020. The percentage of people who are “very” worried about not being able to pay their rent or mortgage has more than tripled – from 8% in 2020 to 27% in 2023. When asked which amenities are “good” or “excellent” in the region, across all geographies, the availability of affordable and accessible housing was ranked last. 

Results for the survey are based on a mail survey of adults living in Washington, DC, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Arlington County, Alexandria City, Fairfax City, and Falls Church City. Gallup mailed a total of 27,000 surveys, available in both English and Spanish, 2,832 of which were completed between May 5 and June 26, 2023. Previous iterations of the survey were completed in 2017 and 2020.

Along with the release of the new report, The Community Foundation will relaunch its Community Action Awards, a microgrant program for nonprofits, as well as the new VoicesDMV Fellowship, a leadership opportunity for residents. The full report and an online dashboard with further geographic and demographic breakdowns of the VoicesDMV survey data is available at VoicesDMV.org.

With Equity & Economic Justice for All: The Community Foundation Hosts the 2024 Health Equity Summit

On April 30, The Community Foundation hosted the 2024 Health Equity Summit at the beautiful Riverside Baptist Church in Southeast DC. The event brought together more than 200 changemakers from across the area for a day of music, speakers, and deep conversations around the pursuit of health equity, economic justice, and liberation in the Greater Washington region.

“We are here today to imagine a world where everyone can experience physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing,” The Community Foundation’s President & CEO Tonia Wellons shared in her introduction to the Summit. “A world where everyone can thrive in a non-extractive economy and a world where harm has been repaired and everyone can be made whole.”

“It’s easy to step into a space and merely provide healthcare,” added Dr. Tollie Elliott, CEO of Mary’s Center and member of the Health Equity Fund governance Committee. “However, if we want to create a truly impactful, innovative system, we need to start doing things differently -- departing from the traditional route and enacting truly transformational work to make lives better in the District of Columbia.”

The Summit was organized by The Community Foundation’s Health Equity Fund – a $95 million fund designated to improving health outcomes and health equity for DC residents. Since September 2022, the fund has disbursed more than $22.8 million in funding to promote economic justice and health equity in the District.

“Our vision for the health equity fund – and for this summit -- is to advocate for change to address the root causes of the deep health inequities and disparities that exist in DC,” Dr. Marla Dean, Senior Director of the Health Equity Fund shared.

The event – which was open to the public – attracted a diverse audience of participants from across the spectrum – including policymakers, government and philanthropic partners, and nonprofit and community leaders. Click here to view the program booklet from the event 

“Health & Healthcare are not the same thing,” Dr. Anthony Iton, Senior Vice President for Healthy Communities at The California Endowment shared. “Only 20% of health outcomes are shaped by the health delivery system. That means that most of health has nothing to do with what we do, as doctors.”

Dr. Anthony Iton and Dr. Damon Francis discuss their recent essay Envisioning a New Health System Rooted in Equity and the importance of investing in an equitable, people-centric approach to healthcare.

Dr. Iton and Dr. Damon Francis, Director of Homeless Health Center in Oakland, California, are co-authors of Envisioning a New Health System Rooted in Equity - an essay published by the Urban Institute last December. In it, they explore the shortfalls of the American health system – including its history of racial discrimination and why it’s critical to invest in an equitable, people-centric approach to healthcare moving forward.

“Our healthcare system today is a predatory, extractive system,” Dr. Iton shared. “It is the single largest source of bankruptcies in this country. Most are built around a corporate model – selling services to paying customers – which has little to do with the needs of the population. And the worst part is it’s getting more expensive, for everyone.”

“The poorest Europeans have better health status than the wealthiest White Americans,” Dr. Francis added, pointing to international data comparing health outcomes from around the world.

In their essay, Dr. Francis and Dr. Iton explain how the devastation caused by World War II in Europe lead many countries to adopt Universal benefits such as childcare and health benefits, which led to better overall health outcomes for their populations. Meanwhile, in the US, healthcare was built increasingly on a corporate model that disadvantaged everyone, especially Blacks and communities of color who suffered discrimination and underinvestment.

“When we talk about the need for universal healthcare, we so often overlook the universal component,” Dr. Iton explained. “It’s a signal of solidarity. It requires that we work to really see each other’s needs and gaps that exist between us.”

“Until we acknowledge that and enshrine it in policy, we will continue to see these disparities.”

“We need to build collective power,” Dr. Francis added. “You cannot explain behaviors based on access to healthcare alone; you can explain it based on political power.”

“Health is political – and it requires political action; people coming together to hold systems accountable for delivering equitable outcomes.”

Dr. Iton concluded the panel by outlining his ABC model for building health equity – promoting Agency (or collective power), strengthening Belonging, and rebuilding our social Contract.

From left to right: Temi F. Bennett, Sohrab Kohli, Jennifer Bryant, and Professor Anthony Cook discuss community wealth-building and cooperative ownership.

The next panel focused on economic justice and creating prosperity for all. The conversation was moderated by Temi F. Bennett, co-CEO of if, a Foundation for Radical Possibility and featured thought leaders in the space of individual community wealth-building and cooperative ownership.

“Creating economic mobility means building opportunities,” Sohrab Kohli, Senior Manager of the Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program explained. “It also means looking at our systems in a reparative lens and finding ways to ‘balance the scales’ (referring to the theme of the Summit) so that everyone wins.”

“Shared or cooperative ownership is a critical part of building economic mobility,” Jennifer Bryant, Program Manager of the Black Employer Ownership Initiative at Project Equity shared. “We’re building economic democracy -- allowing Black and Brown people to benefit from and have a say in the direction of the organizations they work for.”

In her role at Project Equity, Bryant explained how she works with Black business owners to help convert their businesses to employee ownership – allowing their employees and communities to benefit from their legacy in perpetuity.

“If all the businesses that employ Black workers were employee owned, the median wealth of Black workers would increase from $20,000 to over $100,000,” shared Professor Anthony Cook, Professor at Georgetown Law School.

Professor Cook is the founder of Gatebridge Community – an organization working to transform cooperative low-wealth communities by fostering a culture of cooperative ownership. The organization recently announced plans to launch Rosie’s Grocery – a resident and worker owned grocery initiative that will provide access to fresh produce to low-income, low-access (LILA) neighborhoods in the DC metro area.

“We are prototyping that with community support and industry and sector expertise, we can do what other people have refused to do – and that is stepping up and engaging the community, as part of the solution – giving them ownership of the processes that will impact their lives for the better.”

From left to right: Reverend William H. Lamar IV, Dr. Stacey Patton, Dr. Raymond Winbush and Dr. LesLeigh D. Ford discussed the pursuit of liberation and the case for reparations.

The final panel of the day was moderated by Reverend William H. Lamar IV and featured a panel of experts who discussed the pursuit of liberation and the case for reparations.

“It is estimated that more than $380 Billion in Black Wealth has been lost, as a result of slavery,” Dr. Stacey Patton, Research Associate Professor at the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University shared. “Our bodies still hold those memories; the psychological trauma and impact of slavery.”

Dr. Patton and Dr. Raymond Winbush, Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University, shared their insights from studying African American communities over time. They explained how reparations represent not only an important economic milestone, but also a social and cultural turning point to true equity for Black communities.

“It’s not enough to converge the racial wealth gap,” Dr. LesLeigh D. Ford, Associate Director of Race and Equity Research at the Urban Institute shared. “We have to reimagine and reconstitute the system that created it. Without reparations, that level of systemic change simply isn’t possible.”

The program included live Q&A sessions with each of the panels, as well as live and video presentations from community and nonprofit partners with the Health Equity Fund, who spoke about the work they are doing to advance health equity and economic mobility in DC.

In addition to the presentations, participants were treated to powerful performances from local creative artists, including Camilo Montoya, a talented spoken word performer and Pianist Virtuoso Dana Kristina-Joi Morgan – which added an electric atmosphere to the day’s program.

“We thank you all for being a part of this event and this movement to bring health equity and economic mobility to all residents within the District of Columbia,” Dr. Marla Dean shared at the close of the event. “We look forward to partnering with all of you, as we continue to invest and work towards a more equitable and prosperous future for all.”

Click here for more photos from the 2024 Health Equity Summit! For more information about the Health Equity Fund and available funding opportunities, visit our website.

Partnership to End Homelessness Awards $375,000 in Grants Through Waldon Adams Housing Justice Fund

The Partnership to End Homelessness (The Partnership) is pleased to announce $375,000 in grants awarded to eight organizations and coalitions leading systems change efforts in DC through the Waldon Adams Housing Justice Fund. Selected nonprofits receive up to $50,000 in funding to support work to end homelessness and increase the supply of deeply affordable housing.

Named after a fearless advocate for those experiencing chronic homelessness in DC, the Waldon Adams Housing Justice grants are designed to invest in organizations making the greatest impact towards ending homelessness in DC.

Since the Partnership awarded our first grants to advance housing justice, together with tenants and people with lived experience, our community partners led efforts to secure:

• Over 4,o00 Permanent Supportive Housing vouchers to end homelessness for 3,106 individuals and 1,217 families;

• $794 million for the Housing Production Trust Fund to create affordable housing;

• $155 million to repair and preserve public housing;

• $129 million for emergency rental assistance to prevent evictions; and

• More just and equitable housing policies.

This fourth round of grant funding will support work to advance housing justice using multiple strategies, including public will building, narrative change, policy advocacy, and budget advocacy.

Learn more about previous Waldon Adams Housing Justice Grantees

Here’s what some of our grantees have shared about their work and their plans for the coming year:

Fair Budget Coalition

Partnership funding is helping us create and advocate for our FY25 budget priorities to increase safe, affordable housing for DC’s most marginalized residents. We are excited about new strategies we are implementing to build the power and voice of impacted community members in our work. We are creating more space for people with lived experience of homelessness and housing insecurity to draft budget recommendations, voice their concerns, and tell their stories. Currently, there is an unprecedented number of constituents leading and engaging in our issue groups, including the revenue and public deals issue group and the housing security issue group. This ensures that those who are closest to the challenges are leading us on what solutions need to be enacted.

ONE DC

Our goal for Homes for All DC is systems change through political education and leadership development. We proactively work with tenant associations to build their capacity to liberate their properties for collective ownership by residents, while simultaneously raising awareness and building tenant power. Partnership funding will allow us to continue to build and organize a united front of 10,000 to 15,000 renter households to push for the level of political change we need to secure control of housing for a significant portion of Washingtonians. We are disrupting paternalistic narratives and demonstrating that the very people most often displaced by gentrification, racist housing policies, and racialized capitalism are the same people who are effectively organizing their neighbors, asserting their rights, and collectively owning their buildings.

These grants were made possible thanks to generous partners and donors to the Partnership’s Grantmaking Fund.

2024 waldon adams HOUSING JUSTICE GRANTEES

• DC Jobs with Justice

• DC Fiscal Policy Institute

• Empower DC

• Fair Budget Coalition

• Miriam's Kitchen

• ONE DC: Organizing Neighborhood Equity

• People for Fairness Coalition

• The Washington Legal Clinic For The Homeless Inc.

Faces of Sharing - Getting to Know Sharing DC's Fonda Sutton

For Sharing DC Member Fonda Sutton, participating in the Sharing DC initiative has been a labor of love for the city she is proud to call home.

“I love Washington, DC,” Sutton shared. “I’ve lived in this city longer than my own birthplace. For me, this work is not only necessary – it’s personal.”

Born in a rural town in Eastern North Carolina, Sutton fell in love with DC as a young girl visiting relatives who had moved to the nation’s capital to pursue government jobs. Growing up, Sutton eagerly looked forward to spending time over the summers in “Chocolate City”.

After high school, Sutton moved to DC to attend Georgetown University – becoming the first member of her family to earn a college degree (and later a law degree – also from Georgetown). Following graduation, Sutton began a long and prestigious career within DC’s education system, working with some of the city’s early charter school founders and as a leader at DC Public Schools. She currently serves as the Partner of Public Engagement and Advocacy at Education Forward DC – an organization that provides grants to support  more high-quality educational opportunities for students.

Sutton says that while she loves some of the changes that she’s seen in the city over the years, she is mindful of DC’s ever-changing legacy for its Black and Brown residents – particularly the need to make increased investments to reduce inequities and build wealth.

“I’m super excited about the network of organizations that Sharing DC is building – especially those who are working to serve Black and Brown residents in the city,” Sutton shared. “It is so important that we highlight and support the work that they are doing.”

As a seasoned grant maker and community advocate, Sutton is no stranger to funding community work. However, Sharing DC was one of her first glimpses into donor-advised grant making – a process that she says is a win-win scenario for everybody.

“The organization I currently work for is an intermediary grant maker – we raise funds and then make investments to support and improve the education ecosystem,” Sutton explained. “It’s been heartening to instead rub shoulders with individual donors – people who really care about their community and are thinking about the grassroots level impact of their giving.”

Sutton’s experience and perspective – both in grant making and in the community – have been invaluable to the Sharing DC committee, as members work together to decide how to best use collective funds to have the greatest potential impact on the community.

“It’s a beautiful view into private philanthropy,” Sutton said of her experience on Sharing DC. “It’s a great give and take opportunity to work with other donors to strengthen the community around you.”

“It’s also a great opportunity for smaller organizations to get funding – support that makes a big difference for the work that they do in their communities,” she added. “I’ve had the privilege of observing and working with some of these organizations, and I can tell you that it means the world to them.”

Sutton says she has also enjoyed meeting with smaller nonprofit organizations that she was not previously familiar with, some of which she has been so impressed with that she has sought out ways to support them outside of Sharing DC in small and personal ways – like holiday donations through her personal book group.

“I think that many of us are very aware of the larger organizations doing good work on the issues that we relate to, based on our own experience,” she added. “But there are so many smaller organizations really hustling to serve in our community – and if they just had a little more support, it would go so far for the work they are doing.”

When asked about her future plans for participating in Sharing DC, Sutton had this to say.

“It’s important work, and I love to be a part of it – I will be there, as long as they will have me.”

Want to get involved? The Sharing DC Fund Committee welcomes new members! Contact Isabel Spake ([email protected]) to find out more about how you can be a part of this impactful fund!

Community Foundation's Sharing Community Funds Announce $910,000 in Funding for Regional Nonprofits

The Greater Washington Community Foundation is excited to announce $910,000 in grants awarded through its Sharing Community Funds this past cycle.

The Sharing Community Funds bring together donors who share our passion for building more equitable, just, and thriving communities.  With expert facilitation by Community Foundation staff, donors join together to learn first-hand about the challenges facing our community. Thanks to the generosity of this growing community of givers, together we discover and invest in visionary nonprofits working on the frontlines of our region’s most pressing needs.   

In alignment with our Strategic Vision, the Sharing Community Funds focused on the three intervention areas of the racial wealth gap — Basic Needs, Economic Mobility, and Community Wealth Building.

This year, The Community Foundation also celebrated the launch of a new Sharing Community initiative in Northern Virginia! Click here to Learn more!

See Below for a complete list of our nonprofit partners for 2024, sorted by category.

2024 Sharing Community Fund
Nonprofit Partners- Basic Needs

• Sharing DC

  •DC Jobs with Justice engages in systems change advocacy campaigns to meet basic needs like housing stability, minimum wages, cash assistance, and health access.

  •Wendt Center for Loss and Healing provides access to high quality mental healthcare services for low-income and marginalized children, adults, and families.

• Sharing Montgomery

  •The UpCounty Hub (2024 Multi-Year) was founded with the philosophy of providing low-income individuals and families with food and other essential social services without barriers, allowing them to maintain their privacy and dignity. Since its founding in 2020, the UpCounty Hub has grown every year, currently feeding approximately 1,100 families a week via drive-thru distributions, home deliveries, and its choice-pantry walk-in services. More recently, its services expanded to include social services, connecting residents to vital resources such as SNAP.

  •AfriThrive empowers African immigrants to grow and share healthy, culturally appropriate produce with residents facing food insecurity. Its training programs help families achieve self-reliance and economic stability.

  •Care for Your Health provides culturally sensitive in-home health care to elders. Patients are served by trained staff from their own community in touch with their circumstances and needs.

  •Community Bridges, Inc empowers girls in elementary, middle, and high schools to discover their unique identity, voice, and potential through leadership development, college and career readiness, and family support and mentoring.

  •Community Farmshare strives to create a local sustainable food system. It supports small scale farmers by purchasing fresh produce for low-income children and residents struggling with diet-related chronic diseases.

  •Crittenton Services of Greater Washington helps teenage girls achieve academic success, make healthy choices, and chart their own bright futures. Its virtual and school-based programs teach teenage girls to value their education, build healthy relationships, speak up for their own needs, and explore paths toward college and careers.

  •Horizons Greater Washington supports students from low-income families for nine years, from kindergarten through eighth grade. The organization works to foster a joyful environment full of academic, artistic, and athletic activities that inspire young minds and build a love of learning.

  •Housing Unlimited provides affordable, independent housing for adults in mental health recovery in Montgomery County. The organization promotes independence and recovery by providing a stable and comfortable home, allowing tenants to focus on becoming valued and integrated members of the community.

  •Kingdom Global Community Development Corporation operates the East County Hub which distributes food, diapers, and COVID-19 support. The organization also has other public-private partnerships that address food security, health and wellness, education, employment, and housing.

  •Manna Food Center works to eliminate hunger through food distribution, healthy eating education, and advocacy. Its extensive network includes supported more than 50,000 participants over the past year, distributing 4.6 million pounds of food.

  •Mary's Center provides health care, education, and social services to build healthier and stronger communities. In response to COVID-19, Mary’s Center worked to prevent the spread of the virus by offering testing and vaccinations to community members through the Greater Washington region.

  •National Alliance on Mental Illness of Montgomery County (NAMI MC) provides comprehensive support, education, advocacy, and public awareness to promote recovery so that individuals and families affected by mental illness can build better lives.

  •Rainbow Community Development Corporation provides food security relief paired with other safety net services including PPE distribution, eviction and utility cutoff prevention, temporary short-term shelter, and job search and resume assistance.

  •Rainbow Place Shelter provides emergency overnight shelter to women during the hypothermia season and assists them as they transition to a better quality of life. Additionally, the organization is working to open a new year-round, LGBTQ-inclusive shelter to provide a safe haven for youth and young adults.

  •Red Wiggler Community Farm provides comprehensive on-farm training and education programs for adults with developmental disabilities. Half of its organic produce is donated to low-income households throughout Montgomery County.

  •Stepping Stones Shelter leverages partnerships to provide food and integrated essential services to low-income community members. Since inception, it has provided emergency shelter to over 1,035 Montgomery County families.

• Sharing Northern Virginia

  Joyful Hands is deeply rooted in the conviction that education, literacy, and access to community resources are foundational pillars of thriving societies. They provide access to essential school supplies and nutritious food for community members.

  Culmore Clinic advances health by bringing community together to provide primary care, health education and disease prevention services at no cost to uninsured neighbors in Fairfax County.

  Loving Hands Touch Ministry addresses immediate community needs while empowering individuals and families to achieve self-sufficiency, ensuring access to necessities like food, shelter, healthcare, and education.

  The Growth and Healing HUB grows and nurtures the mental health and well-being of children, youth, young adults, and families. They provide services to anyone residing in the state of Virginia and strive to help all feel safe & supported and receive the help they deserve.

  New Hope Housing provides case management, permanent housing and shelter to support the needs of homeless individuals in Northern Virginia.

  Arm & Arm, Inc provides peer-to-peer mentoring and trauma recovery services to communities across Northern Virginia.

2024 Sharing Community Fund
Nonprofit Partners - Economic Mobility

• Sharing DC

  •Byte Back creates opportunities for upward economic mobility by providing computer foundations, certification training and wraparound support to help marginalized adults develop essential digital skills.

  •TRIGGER Project (2024 Multi-Year) partners with the DC Department of Employment Services to provide paid summer jobs and advocacy training for youth who have experienced or are at-risk of experiencing gun violence.

• Sharing Montgomery

  •Identity, Inc. (2024 Multi-Year) empowers youth and their families with the social-emotional, academic, workforce, and life skills they need to succeed in the modern world. It operates at schools, in the community, and on playing fields, working to reach Latino and other historically underserved residents. Like family, Identity celebrates victories and offers extra help when something more is needed. Last year alone, Identity reached more than 45,000 Montgomery County residents.

  •Future Link (2024 Multi-Year) seeks to close the opportunity divide for first-generation-to-college, high-potential young adults (ages 18-25) by providing them with the resources, knowledge, skills, and personalized support needed to achieve their education and career goals. Annually, Future Link serves 300 students with transformative services including paid internships, career coaching, mentoring, tutoring, scholarships, and more.

  •Crossroads Community Food Network provides training and support for startup food businesses and healthy eating education to local students and shoppers at Crossroads Farmers Market. Its farmers market nutrition incentives allow federal nutrition benefits recipients to double the value of these benefits spent at the market.

  •Generation Hope provides cohort and one-on-one mentoring support plus scholarships for low-income teen parents pursuing college degrees. It recently added early childhood programming to equip families with the resources necessary for their children to start kindergarten with a strong academic foundation.

  •Housing Initiative Partnership develops innovative affordable housing. In addition, it seeks to revitalizes neighborhoods and equip people to achieve their housing and financial goals through financial coaching and bilingual housing counseling.

  •Interfaith Works provides emergency assistance and counseling, vocational services, food distributions, clothing, and shelter for those experiencing homelessness. With volunteers from 165 faith communities, its integrated prevention, stabilization, and empowerment programs support homeless low-income county residents.

  •Montgomery College Foundation, co-leads the Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success (ACES) program in partnership with Montgomery County Public Schools and The Universities at Shady Grove. ACES provides individualized academic coaching, scholarship opportunities, and career readiness to underrepresented high school students, for a seamless and supportive pathway to a bachelor’s degree.

• Sharing Northern Virginia

  Future Kings uses education, mentoring, training, practical experiences, and mastery of 21st century technology in order to create a pipeline of young men from underserved communities who excel in STEM related careers and positively influence their communities.

  Hardemon Dynasty, Inc provides affordable housing for young adults aging out of foster care and offer sufficient support during their transition to independence.

• Sharing Prince George's

  •Life After Release (LAR) is a women-led organization focused on building a post-conviction movement, identifying challenges and creating solutions for formerly incarcerated federal/state prisoners, bailed-out moms, and mothers of youth offenders and juvenile lifers. The organization work is grounded in a vision of self-determination for directly impacted communities and partners with Howard Law and other legal services to advocate for their legal empowerment.

  •Hillside Childrens Foundation provides essential mentoring programs for middle school and high school students. The programs are designed to provide students a path to economic mobility through college preparation and job readiness programs.

  •HomeFreeUSA (2024 Multi-Year) is a fast track to homeownership program that helps renters prepare for mortgage approval and homeownership. The program provides one-on-one guidance, housing counseling, and financial planning to help low-income individuals on the path to homeownership.

  •Leep to College Foundation helps at-risk youth by providing academic support, financial education and year-round formal and informal learning experiences to students in Prince Geoge’s County public schools. The program works with students starting in the 7th/8th grade and works with them until they graduate high school and beyond.

2024 Sharing Community Fund Nonprofit Partners - Individual & Community Wealth Building

• Sharing DC

  •Women Palante (2024 Multi-Year) empowers Latina women through a holistic approach to entrepreneurship that supports business creation, mental health, legal and financial orientation.

  •Gatebridge Community (2024 Multi-Year) is on a mission to transform low-wealth communities by fostering a culture of cooperative ownership to build wealth and create sustainable neighborhoods. The organization is partnering with the Coalition for Racial Equity (CREDE) and the National Coop Grocery to launch a network of five worker and consumer owned co-op grocery stores in the DMV – including two serving communities in Ward 7 & 8.

• Sharing Montgomery

  •Capital Area Asset Building Corporation provides financial literacy and matched savings programs, enabling low-income residents to become financially stable and pursue their dreams.

  •Habitat for Humanity Metro Maryland provides home preservation and homeownership programs that help low-income families live a more stable, self-reliant life. Its staff, homeowners, and volunteers have completed nearly 850 projects since its inception.

  •Montgomery Moving Forward is a collective impact initiative which convenes leaders from government, business, philanthropy, education, and nonprofits to solve complex problems facing the county. As a capacity building partner, Sharing Montgomery’s grant empowers MMF’s nonprofit leaders to advocate around pressing issues that affect their clients, especially around challenges related to economic opportunity and early childhood education.

  •Nonprofit Montgomery supports local organizations around government relations, advocacy, strategic communications, financial management, metrics tracking, and cross-sector problem solving. As a capacity building partner, Sharing Montgomery’s support will enable our direct-service grantees to receive the personalized support and connections that will help them deepen their impact.

• Sharing Prince George's

  •Gatebridge Community is on a mission to transform low-wealth communities by fostering a culture of cooperative ownership to build wealth and create sustainable neighborhoods. The organization is partnering with the Coalition for Racial Equity (CREDE) and the National Coop Grocery to launch a network of five worker and consumer owned co-op grocery stores in the DMV – including one in Prince George’s County.

  •Seed Spot (2024 Multi-Year) is on a mission to educate, accelerate, and invest in diverse entrepreneurs who are creating solutions to social problems. The program provides entrepreneurs with mentors and an intensive 10-week impact accelerator designed to help them raise capital to start their business.

  •Washington Area Community Investment Fund (WACIF) promotes equity and economic opportunity in underserved neighborhoods in the DMV by providing access to capital products, services ,and capacity-building technical assistance for low- and moderate-income entrepreneurs.

Economic Justice for All

On Tuesday, April 30, The Community Foundation is hosting the 2024 Health Equity Summit - With Equity & Economic Justice For All at Riverside Church. Click here to Register!

Editor’s Note: In this guest post, Dr. Marla Dean, Senior Director of the Health Equity Fund shares her point of view on what health equity for all means to her and why it’s important for funders and community partners to come together on this issue.

I purchased a home in Ward 7 in the Southeast quadrant of the city. When my husband and I decided it was time to buy this home, we wanted a neighborhood that reminded us of the places where we were born and nurtured. I grew up in Detroit, the home of the automobile, unions, Motown, Aretha Franklin, and Kem. My husband grew up in Roosevelt, NY., the home of Dr. J, Eddie Murphy, Howard Stern and Public Enemy. We grew up in communities rich with culture, the arts, and radical political thought. We were excited about our predominately African American, East of the River neighborhood. Our neighborhood boasts beautiful, single-family brick homes, many with attached garages, large front and back yards, and sprawling hills. Except for the hills, it is just like the places we grew up.

When we moved to our community, I had no idea that we were not only moving east of the Anacostia River but we were moving to what so many deemed “the other side of the tracks.” This experience was not new to us because my husband came from a small section of Long Island in the ultra-wealthy New York City suburbs that most people avoid. And Detroit has always been a place thought of as persistently dangerous and abysmally poor.

While I love my neighborhood, over time I came to understand the history of structural racism in DC and how it impacts our daily lives. A history of redlining, school segregation and lack of home rule has resulted in vast inequities between the eight wards. Some impacts are trivial. When my son, Aaron, now a graduate of Morehouse College, was in high school wanting to date a young lady from another part of town, her father told me he was very concerned about his daughter dating someone from Southeast DC. Others have more far-reaching implications, like the impact of concentrated poverty on a community’s safety, hopes and dreams, the experience of food deserts, or the fact that so many of our school-age children leave their communities daily, heading north and west in search of a “quality” education.

Can you imagine the effects of having to spend years leaving your own community because you are consistently told that your own community cannot educate you well, or the loss of social connectedness to family, friends, and neighbors because you are spending hours in a day traveling to and from school?  As one person said in a recent community listening session, “As a Black woman . . . I see that our network is not as strong as it used to be in the city. I was here for Chocolate City. But I just don't know what is happening and what has happened to us as a people in DC, my Black people.” These are the social impacts but there are economic impacts too.

By now, many of us have heard the statistic that the Greater Washington DC Region has a racial wealth gap of 81:1 white to Black. But did you know that this racial wealth gap increases exponentially as one’s level of educational attainment increases? (Long, 2020)

Can you imagine a world where the higher the education level you reach, the wider that wealth gap becomes between you and your white peers?  This is because my community experiences lower assessed home values, greater student loan and other debt, and significantly lower wages. Can you imagine being a child watching all of this at play and coming to the realization that education is not the great equalizer. As another community member said in one of our listening sessions, “I think one of the things that's really contributing to the crime is gentrification. Because we're seeing all these extravagant buildings that nobody can afford.” Imagine looking around you and seeing great wealth but also knowing you will never experience its benefits. So, our pursuit for economic justice for all can only be realized when we all experience real equity and true liberation.

For more information about the Black-White Economic divide, please read  

Heather Long’s article, “The Black-White Economic Divide Is as Wide as It Was in 1968.” Washington Post, 4 June 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/04/economic-divide-black-households/.

Liberation for All

On Tuesday, April 30, The Community Foundation is hosting the 2024 Health Equity Summit - With Equity & Economic Justice For All at Riverside Church. Click here to Register!

Editor’s Note: In this guest post, Dr. Marla Dean, Senior Director of the Health Equity Fund shares her point of view on what health equity for all means to her and why it’s important for funders and community partners to come together on this issue.

As a Detroit native, I am proud that my late Congressman John Conyers (D-Detroit) introduced a reparations bill into Congress every year since 1989. He did this for nearly 30 years until he retired from Congress. Many towns, and even a state or two, have reparation taskforces. A very few have distributed some form of reparations to the descendants of those who were enslaved, faced Jim Crow, and suffered under de facto segregation. The point is the call for reparations ain’t new.

I have always had a marginal relationship with the call for reparations. I have never spoken against them, but I have also thought they would never happen in my lifetime. Completely understanding that reparations are the only true remedy to make my people whole, I thought of reparations like my 98-year-old grandmother thought of a Black president: it could never happen in her lifetime. But it did.

So, I kept my eye on reparations, while preferring to work on issues that seemed closer in proximity and had a greater probability of being solved like poverty, racism, and sexism. And as I watched from my side eye, the movement gained momentum. I even had the audacity to attend a symposium co-hosted by Harvard Public Health Magazine and Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights titled, Can Reparations Close the Racial Health Gap? There I learned that if African Americans had the same health outcomes as our white peers there would literally be 8 million more African Americans alive today in these United States of America. This is when and where I decided that reparations were a matter of life and death, and I would no longer have a marginal relationship with the call for them.

Then, I learned that white DC slaveowners were the only class of people to receive reparations from the federal government for slavery through The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862. President Lincoln signed the bill into law on April 16, freeing enslaved people in the District and compensating owners up to $300 for each freed person. This act maintained the wealth of the slaveholders and left all the formerly enslaved barren except for a few.

One such man was Gabriel Coakley. Coakley, a former slave, was able to purchase his family from their white slaveholders. And because he technically owned them at the time of the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862, he was one of the rare Black people who received reparations. From his “windfall of riches,” he was able to set his family on a path to intergenerational wealth that holds until today.

Imagine if all the formerly enslaved had the same opportunity that Coakley did. What would be our collective lot today?  Would there be an 81:1 racial wealth gap? Would there be 8 million more African American souls walking around this country? Would our health outcomes mirror those of our white peers? Would we all be free from the shackles of oppression? The opportunities and possibilities are endless.

That is why it’s all the more important for us to accelerate the push for reparations. Because our pursuit for liberation for all can only be realized when we all are free, and reparations have been made and paid.

For more on the story of Gabriel Coakley, listen to MSNBC’s Trymaine Lee’s Podcast:   “Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations.” 22 February 2024, MSNBC.com. https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/uncounted-millions-take-s-owed-rcna139059

Health Equity For All

On Tuesday, April 30, The Community Foundation is hosting the 2024 Health Equity Summit - With Equity & Economic Justice For All at Riverside Church. Click here to Register!

Editor’s Note: In this guest post, Dr. Marla Dean, Senior Director of the Health Equity Fund shares her point of view on what health equity for all means to her and why it’s important for funders and community partners to come together on this issue.

I remember that one day in September of 1978 as clearly as I remember summers in my hometown of Detroit. Detroit summers are something to behold. It is a musical city, and more diverse than most imagine. Each weekend, a vibrant ethnic festival takes place downtown at Hart Plaza. Each festival honors an ethnic group’s culture, and they all are pregnant with the promises of equity, justice, and liberation.

My memories of the 17th of September, three short days after my ninth birthday, shine above even those captivating celebrations. On that day, tears streamed down my face as I witnessed the signing of the Camp David Peace Accords on television, and I thought Middle East Peace was imminent between the Jews and Arabs who form two major communities in my hometown.

On that day, I first understood something about my life’s purpose: I was put on this Earth to advocate for all people’s liberation, but specifically for my own people, descendants of unknown African lands. I carried this level of intensity through every stage of my life - high school, college, work, community, and marriage - until a day I can’t remember well where I nearly lost my memories and my purpose.

The details escape me, but in 2016 I suffered a stroke at work. I did not know what was wrong, but I did know something was not right. Riding in an Uber to the hospital here in DC, I could not quite figure it out. “What is happening to me?” I wondered. My husband rushed to the hospital to be by my side. Eventually, I was discharged without a diagnosis. Both of us have college educations, yet we were unable to receive the care and information everyone deserves in a city as wealthy as DC. Immediately, I found a neurologist who diagnosed and cared for me, but I was never given an exact cause for my stroke, except for stress. After this experience, I understood medical inequity is stressful, and it can even kill (Szabo).

I carry the stress of a community which knows it is not valued. I carry the stress of an African American woman who is trying to hold herself and her community together. I carry the stress of people who are yearning to be free.

I once had a supervisor say to me, “Marla, you have no time or tolerance for frivolity.”  When she said that, I thought, “how can anyone relax with so much work to be done?” That same year I had my stroke.

Now, almost 8-years into a journey of healing, I am trying to understand the concept of self-care. As one of my former employees once told me, “Dr. Dean, rest is revolutionary.”

So now as I work to advance health equity for all, I am reminded to be gentle to myself. These inequities are social and structural, and they manifest themselves in our health. Only 20% of health outcomes are due to medical care or access. 80% are due to other factors. So, our pursuit for health equity for all can only be realized when we all experience real justice and true liberation.

For more information about medical errors and minority women, please read Liz Szabo’s article, “Medical Errors Kill Scores Each Year in the U.S., Especially Women and Minorities.” NBC News, 15 Jan. 2024, www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/medical-mistakes-are-likely-women-minorities-rcna133726

For more information about health equity, please view Dr. Francis’, Dr. Iton’s, and Dr. Smedley’s report, “Envisioning a New Health System Rooted in Equity” Urban Institute, 27 Dec. 2023. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/envisioning-new-health-system-rooted-equity

To learn more, be sure to register to join the 2024 Health Equity Summit on Tuesday, April 30th! To learn about the Health Equity Fund, visit our website.

Leaders of the Future: Nonprofit Partners with the Sharing Community Funds

In 2024, The Community Foundation is highlighting 'Leaders of the Future' - individuals and organizations who inspire us to look towards a brighter future for Greater Washington.

This month, we are highlighting incredible leaders that strengthen and empower our community through our Sharing Community initiatives. The Sharing Community Initiative facilitates connections between donors and nonprofits to build more equitable, just, and thriving communities.

Part of that initiative includes awarding intentional, multi-year grants designed to empower our nonprofit partners and the communities they serve. Below are just a few responses from some of our multi-year nonprofit partners about the critical work they are doing in our communities!

• DC Kincare Alliance

  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  DC KinCare Alliance serves all of the neighborhoods in DC, but primarily Wards 5, 7, and 8.

  In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Founded in 2017, DC KinCare Alliance is a legal services organization whose mission is to support the legal, financial, and related service needs of relative caregivers (primarily Black women) who step up to raise at-risk DC children in times of crisis when the children’s parents are unable to care for them due to mental health and substance use disorders, incarceration, death, abuse and neglect, and/or deportation.

  How has funding from a Sharing Community Initiative impacted the work you do? Feel free to share any brief examples of projects or outcomes you've seen over the past year.

  The Sharing DC Community Initiative helped DC KinCare Alliance (DCKC) serve 182 relative caregiver clients, raising 240 DC children in 319 legal matters in 2023—surpassing our goals by 21% for relative caregivers served and 42% for legal matters provided. The Initiative also made it possible for DCKC to hire a DC relative caregiver (who is a former client and current member of our Community Board) as our first Paralegal and Client Intake Manager. Finally, the Initiative helped DCKC to commence an adoption pilot (PROJECT ADOPT), to help grandparents and caregivers adopt the children they care for.

  For those receiving Sharing Community funding for the first-time, what excites you the most about receiving support through the Sharing Community initiative?

  As a small and relatively new organization, we were especially excited to receive support from the Sharing DC Community Initiative. It is a testament to the reach of our organization in the broader DC community for the Initiative to identify us as a potential partner and then determine us worthy of multi-year funding.

  As a nonprofit leader in our community, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  I dream of a future where all DC children can live in safe and stable homes free from abuse, neglect, poverty, racism, violence, and fear. I dream of a future where government systems are set up to help families achieve success and where all families, including kinship families, are recognized and treated with dignity and respect.

• The T.R.I.G.G.E.R. Project

  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  We serve youth citywide, in the District of Columbia.

  In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  The True Reasons I Grabbed the Gun Evolved from Risks Project prevents the spread of the gun violence disease in Washington, D.C. through the intersectionality of Public Health and Positive Youth Development. We are prevention - the absence and proactive state of the gun violence.

  How has funding from a Sharing Community Initiative impacted the work you do? Feel free to share any brief examples of projects or outcomes you've seen over the past year.

  We look forward to joining the Sharing Community Initiative and the safe space it will provide to grow and strategically connect to like-hearted organizations for the economic mobility and health equity of our youth and families that we serve. We also look forward to educating the community on our Public Health approach as gun violence prevention can be used as a catalyst for to shape proactive policy, practice, and structures to eliminate many, if not all, of our deepest disparities.

  For those receiving Sharing Community funding for the first-time, what excites you the most about receiving support through the Sharing Community initiative?

  In terms of funding, The T.R.I.G.G.E.R. Project has operated inadequately since being founded. It is hard for people to believe our financial struggles because of our widespread impact yet, up until receiving Sharing Community funding, we have only been able to secure funding for events or programs. We are most excited to receive our FIRST multiyear investment in providing flexible general operating support for our organization!

  As a nonprofit leader in our community, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  We envision a world free from the disease of gun violence! This vision with the support of Sharing Community equates to the social change I know is possible. With my experiencing an epidemic of youth violence and gun violence, many programs and initiatives are reactionary and lack efforts and funding structures that address root causes and chronic disparities. I aim to trail blaze a sense of value and funding structure for primary prevention programming and policy that will prevent future gun violence.

• GateBridge Community

  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  Primarily, Wards 7 & 8 in Washington DC, Prince George’s County, along the Blue Line Corridor, and East Montgomery County.

  In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  At GateBridge, we're on a mission to transform low-wealth communities by fostering a culture of cooperative ownership to build wealth and create sustainable neighborhoods where everyone has an opportunity to thrive. GateBridge serves as an accelerator of community wealth building ventures, raising patient capital and providing a range of technical supports for cooperative initiatives that feature ownership and control by workers, consumers, producers, and residents of local communities.

  How has funding from a Sharing Community Initiative impacted the work you do? Feel free to share any brief examples of projects or outcomes you've seen over the past year.

  The first community wealth building project supported by the GateBridge Community Accelerator is the launch of five worker and resident owned grocery stores, the first two of which will be in Wards 7 and 8 of the District. Sharing Community funding will 1) bolster the community education and engagement essential to recruiting the consumers needed to sustain the store 2) secure the market feasibility studies needed to determine the best trade areas to locate the stores and 3) retain the legal, accounting, and technical support needed to assure project stability and sustainability

  For those receiving Sharing Community funding for the first-time, what excites you the most about receiving support through the Sharing Community initiative?

  Greater Washington Community Foundation is an established and well respected institution known for its commitment to community wellbeing in the Washington DC area. Community Wealth Building is a long and arduous journey, and success substantially depends on anchor institution partnerships like the Community Foundation. My hope is that the Foundation will increasingly see GateBridge Community as a trusted partner in this important work over the coming years. I see this funding opportunity as the beginning of that journey toward trust and committed partnership.

  As a nonprofit leader in our community, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  A community where race and place no longer predict wealth and wellbeing and where every neighborhood has the physical, social, and civic infrastructure to promote human flourishing. White household median wealth in the DMV is 81 times that of Black household median wealth. GateBridge Community will work to close this racial wealth gap by scaling business enterprises that generate and maintain wealth in divested communities rather extracting it to build the wealth of other communities. Rosie’s Grocery is our first initiative. It will not be our last.

• CareerCatchers

  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  In 2023, we worked with 960 clients, the highest number the organization has served in a given year. Currently, almost 70% of our clientele resides in the most underserved Montgomery County zip codes. Additionally, we also serve clients in Prince George’s County and DC Wards 7 & 8.

  In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Our mission is to provide personalized job-skills counseling, promote participation in work skills and training programs, foster self-esteem, and empower individuals. We aim to help clients transition out of poverty by utilizing counseling, individualized training, community and employer partnerships, helping find alternatives to minimum-wage, dead-end jobs. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of our vision, programs, and mission.

  How has funding from a Sharing Community Initiative impacted the work you do? Feel free to share any brief examples of projects or outcomes you've seen over the past year.

  In 2023, the funding we received from Sharing Montgomery allowed us to expand our basic skills classes in several ways. We have been able to offer more classes to our clients on topics such as social media networking and small business promotion, greatly increasing the opportunities available to our clients. Additionally, we were able to increase the number of partners presenting at our weekly virtual workshops, allowing our clients to learn about new career paths and resources. These feats culminated in CareerCatchers first ever in-person Empowerment event in October of 2023: Family Fun Day. Our Family Fun Day allowed our clients the opportunity to engage with our staff and partners, promote their small businesses, and learn more about food security. We hope to continue expanding our training offerings with the continued support of the GWCF.

  As a nonprofit leader in our community, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  As the needs of our community grow, we intend to grow to meet them. In 2023, we were able to serve over 950 clients, and hope to serve over 1,000 in the years to come. Additionally, we plan to extend our job retention services. We approach our clients with a respect for not only their immediate goals, but also their long term goals of career success and financial sustainability. We have seen great success for clients who have received job retention services for one year, and would like to continue expanding those services to clients for two years post-employment. Finally, engaging our partners and volunteers to continue expanding our training offerings allows our clients to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of professional development. Continuing our outreach to new partners provides our clients with new avenues to pursue their goals.

• IMPACT Silver Spring

  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  The Montgomery County residents supported by IMPACT are mostly low-income and BIPOC, with many programs and activities in Spanish- and Amharic-speaking immigrant communities. Many IMPACT offerings, including virtual events, are publicized countywide, and we have participants from all areas of the county, but most of our in-person community work is currently done in the neighborhoods of Long Branch, Wheaton, Glenmont, Fairland, and most recently, Gaithersburg.

  In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Our mission is to advance racial equity and justice in Montgomery County by working for change at 3 levels: changing hearts and minds at the individual level; building grassroots power and community connections at the neighborhood level; and changing the greater systems, structures, and policies that continue to generate inequitable outcomes for communities of color.

  How has funding from a Sharing Community Initiative impacted the work you do? Feel free to share any brief examples of projects or outcomes you've seen over the past year.

  Sharing Montgomery funding continues to support Impact’s work of promoting economic mobility and wealth building within BIPOC, immigrant, and low-income communities. Most of this work is done via our Community Trade Academy (CTA). The CTA takes a three-pronged approach to economic empowerment by: 1. offering vocational training to adult students (mostly immigrant women) in skills such as piñata or jewelry making; 2. teaching the basic skills of running a small business; and 3. providing markets where students gain real world experience as microentrepreneurs. Most recently, we worked with partners to host outdoor Holiday Markets (December 16 and 23, 2023) and Valentine’s Day Markets (February 10 and 11, 2024). Depending on the day, between 3 and 18 microentrepreneurs participated, selling between $50 and $700 worth of merchandise. We never charge vendor fees for participating in markets because those fees are often cost prohibitive. While we know classroom learning is important, we also know it is not enough. The experience of setting up, running, and breaking down these markets provides budding entrepreneurs with the crucial know-how and confidence that can only be gained experientially. Sharing Montgomery funding has been critical to paying for supplies and technical assistance needed for CTA events like these markets.

  As a nonprofit leader in our community, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  An important element of the Community Trade Academy is that it is neighborhood-based. We launched our pilot academy in the Silver Spring community of Wheaton. We want to launch future academies in Gaithersburg and East County, tailored to the interests and cultures in those neighborhoods. Additionally, classes in the pilot academy were all taught in Spanish. We would like to replicate the model in other communities and offer it to English-speaking immigrants. Additionally, in the near future, we hope to introduce solidarity economy (an economy that prioritizes people and the planet) concepts such as sustainability and worker cooperation as part of our CTA curriculum.

• Montgomery county food council

  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  All communities in Montgomery County, MD

  In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  The mission of the Montgomery County Food Council (MCFC) is to bring together a diverse representation of stakeholders in a public-private partnership to improve the environmental, economic, social and nutritional health of Montgomery County, Maryland through the creation of a robust and sustainable local food system.

  How has funding from a Sharing Community Initiative impacted the work you do? Feel free to share any brief examples of projects or outcomes you've seen over the past year.

  The grant supported MCFC’s food security program in increasing outreach and collaboration among food assistance providers who are serving the County’s food insecure residents. MCFC co-implemented a Farm to Food Bank Program, which provided technical assistance and collaboration between 37 local farms in 2022 and 2023 to support a sustained and resilient local food supply and provide more nutritious and culturally diverse produce to residents who experience hunger. In FY 2023, over 191,212 lbs of fresh, locally grown produce was purchased or donated to over 54 food assistance providers.

  As a nonprofit leader in our community, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  As the only non-profit organization convening all sectors of the food system within Montgomery County, and connecting various initiatives to partners throughout the region, MCFC hopes to build the capacity of our partners implement the County’s Strategic Plan to End Childhood Hunger. In addition, we hope to be more instrumental in transforming our public schools by supporting MCPS to embed wellness plans (or policies) that nurture the development of “food curious” children through the farm to school initiative.

• Black and Brown Coalition for Educational Equity & Excellence

  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  The BBC serves Black, Brown, and low-income communities in Montgomery County, MD.

  In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  The Black and Brown Coalition for Educational Equity and Excellence unites these traditionally marginalized communities to demand an education system that serves all students equitably. The BBC takes aim at dismantling systemic barriers that have underserved and limited the success of Black, Brown, and students from low-income families and fights for equitable access to the resources needed to thrive.

  How has funding from a Sharing Community Initiative impacted the work you do? Feel free to share any brief examples of projects or outcomes you've seen over the past year.

  "Having a multiyear grant allows the Coalition to take on issues that require sustained advocacy” explained Byron Johns, co-founder. In 2023, the BBC galvanized the Black and Brown communities around literacy inequity. Nearly 60% of Black and over 70% of Latino fifth-grade students are not reading at grade level. And their parents are often unaware. In November, the BBC brought together over 800 Black, Brown and low-income caregivers to demand that schools "Get Reading Right, Now!". Building on our 2022 advocacy for greater investment in literacy and math, the BBC is now leading the charge for an “early alert system” -- an easy-to-understand communication to parents when their students miss milestones –and for the development of individualized success plans to ensure that these students catch up and keep up. “We need the voices of our entire community to make literacy a priority” said Diego Uriburu, co-founder.

  As a nonprofit leader in our community, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  The BBC envisions a future where Black, Brown, and low-income students who attend Montgomery County Public Schools have equitable access to resources and supports that will ensure the greatest opportunities for success in their educations, careers, and lives.

• CollegeTracks

  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  5 MCPS High Schools in Montgomery County, based in Gaithersburg, Wheaton, Silver Spring, Burtonsville, and Bethesda.

  In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  The mission of CollegeTracks is to empower first-generation-to-college students and students from low-income and immigrant households in Montgomery County, Maryland by helping them bridge systemic opportunity gaps with enough support to get to and through postsecondary education and on a career pathway. We envision a future in which every student who graduates from high school in Montgomery County, Maryland has equitable access to their chosen career pathway.

  How has funding from a Sharing Community Initiative impacted the work you do? Feel free to share any brief examples of projects or outcomes you've seen over the past year.

  Sharing Montgomery funding has helped open doors to new partnerships and funding relationships, has helped validate our approach in our community, and has brought us new donors, volunteers, and partners. This has been critical as we have expanded to meet rising demand, and prepared to grow across Montgomery County. For example, CollegeTracks' program enrollment rose by 22% last year, exceeding our pre-pandemic high by 9%, which put a great deal of stress on our program and infrastructure. Thanks to stable, yet flexible funding like Sharing Montgomery, we were able to stregmthen our program and meet our high programmatic goals, even while serving these expanded numbers.

  For those receiving Sharing Community funding for the first-time, what excites you the most about receiving support through the Sharing Community initiative?

  The most exciting part of receiving our first multi-year Sharing Montgomery award has been the realization that the people in our community who are paying the closest attention to work like ours thought of our program as highly effective, and worthy of this investment and recognition. We have worked hard to build a program model that gets results, and the fact that the people who know our work and community best agree is a tremendous boost to our team.

  As a nonprofit leader in our community, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  At CollegeTracks, we dream of a future for Montgomery County where every student truly has the opportunity and support that they need to thrive. We are a highly educated and wealthy County, and we have access to proven solutions to the problems that we face. We just need to decide not to accept the status quo, and make these solutions happen.

• Beloved Community Incubator

  Which Communities/Neighborhoods do you serve?

  Beloved Community Incubator is a regional solidarity economy movement organization and lender. We engage in worker justice campaigns, mostly in Washington, DC, and offer a unique combination of cooperative incubation, lending, technical assistance, and mutual aid to create just and equitable democratic workplaces across our entire region.

  In 2-3 sentences, please briefly describe the mission of your organization

  Beloved Community Incubator is a solidarity economy movement organization, incubator, lender, and worker self-directed non-profit in Washington, DC. BCI focuses on building a regional solidarity economy that centers people, especially poor and working-class workers and people of color, over profit. We provide incubation for worker-owned cooperatives, as well as back end support for cooperatives through the BCI Network. We offer non-extractive lending to local cooperatives through the DC Solidarity Economy Loan Fund, and organize for worker power and collective control of resources in DC through community organizing, broad-based campaigns, and mutual aid.

  How has funding from a Sharing Community Initiative impacted the work you do? Feel free to share any brief examples of projects or outcomes you've seen over the past year.

  We secured the passage of the Street Vendor Advancement Act of 2023 which: decriminalized street vending without a license and removed criminal background checks, reduced fees for obtaining a vending license, created a micro-enterprise home kitchen license, which allows food entrepreneurs across the city to create home based catering businesses , and created a vending zone in Mount Pleasant/Columbia Heights, allowing a higher concentration of vendors per block. In February of this year, we launched the BCI Street Vendor License Fund. This $125,000 fund will cover eligible costs and fees associated with accessing licenses and inspections for almost 100 vendors. Our vision for growing the regional solidarity economy is coming to fruition! The DC Solidarity Economy Loan Fund held its official launch event and has received approval for 3 additional loans – totaling $922,500 dollars. Two of the loans were to a small tech cooperative for equipment and a line of credit. The most significant loan is to Community Purchasing Alliance (CPA). CPA organizes institutions to engage in collective purchasing of contracts. Purchasing programs include janitorial, HVAC, trash removal, security, and solar. Our partnership positions BCI to proposition current vendors to use worker-ownership as a succession plan, incubate cooperatives in the sectors of their current purchasing programs, and connect cooperatives that already exist (in cleaning, food service, and landscaping) to larger contracts.

  For those receiving Sharing Community funding for the first-time, what excites you the most about receiving support through the Sharing Community initiative?

  What is most exciting to me is knowing that the Sharing DC Committee really understands and believes in our vision. We realize that our organizing model as a solidarity economy organization is unique. Our power building strategy is through institution building (through cooperatives) and membership, but also includes a programmatic and technical assistance component. Our work with “high touch” cooperatives is essentially base building with poor and working class BIPOC workers in order to build a coop from the ground up. There is more and more research that traditional workforce development and job training programs don't guarantee jobs or increased income. By developing and supporting worker-owned cooperatives, creating market access for local BIPOC-owned cooperatives, and using DC SELF to invest an additional 1 million dollars in local cooperatives over the next 2 years, we are working to close the racial wealth gap. The funding from Sharing DC committee means they believe in our vision too.

  As a nonprofit leader in our community, what are your dreams or aspirations for the future?

  Last summer, the local coop ecosystem came together to vision what's possible and shape our work for the future. Their collective vision included affordable care cooperatives (childcare, home health care, elder care), bookkeeping and legal cooperatives, coop grocery stores, and collectively owned spaces for artists and food businesses. BCI is always dreaming about more community control over resources in our community -- think grocery stores, workplaces, land, banks, housing, and more!

Leaders of the Future Spotlight: Melody Webb, Mothers Outreach Network - Uplifting the Power of Black Motherhood Through Guaranteed Income

Webb with one of the families participating in the Mother Up pilot program

In honor of International Women’s Day, The Community Foundation is highlighting incredible female leaders in our community that understand, advocate for, and inspire inclusion by promoting a sense of belonging, relevance and empowerment.

This month, we’re pleased to highlight Melody Webb, Executive Director of Mother’s Outreach Network and founder of the DC Guaranteed Income Coalition. The Community Foundation is a proud to partner with Mother’s Outreach Network through our Health Equity Fund and is committed to advancing the work of the DC Guaranteed Income Coalition.

For Melody Webb, Executive Director of the Mother’s Outreach Network, you can’t put a price tag on motherhood.

“In my opinion, being a mother is one of the most important roles a woman can have,” Webb shared. “You’re a role model, you’re a caregiver; but for your children, you’re the most important person in their young lives. You’re their advocate; you’re their superhero. And that makes you invaluable.”

A DC Native with family ties to the Civil Rights Movement, Webb was raised with a strong belief in the value of advocacy. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Webb began working with organizations like the Legal Aid Society, The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, and the DC Court of Appeals – to tackle systemic community issues ranging from youth violence prevention to supporting returning citizens.

“I’ve always seen myself as an aspiring changemaker,” Webb shared. “Rather than work in a big law firm, I wanted to use my legal training to address deep structural, racial, gender and economic issues.”

However, her most impactful work – that of supporting Black Mothers – didn’t begin until 2002, when Webb made the decision to adjust her legal career to become a stay-at-home mom.

Webb with her youngest son, who volunteers with the DC Guaranteed Income Coalition.

The Joys and Barriers of Black Motherhood

For the next four years, Webb embraced the joys and challenges of being a mother to her three children and nurture her growing her family – all the while seeking opportunities to get further involved in local advocacy. She founded an online policy advocacy project, which focused on local and national advocacy issues. The project gained national attention and provided a platform for her to return to the workforce in 2007 – when she joined SEIU as Associate General Counsel and volunteered with the Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign.

“Working on the Obama Campaign and at SEIU was such a great experience,” Webb recalled. “I enjoyed learning the power of organizing and the importance of supporting those who are the bread and butter of our society, but don’t have their basic needs being met.”

People like Black single mothers. While at SEIU, Webb’s attention gravitated towards women who were service employees – especially single mothers and returning citizens – who were working multiple jobs just to stay afloat. She was deeply moved by the many barriers that they faced just to stay in the workforce and provide for their children.

Participants from Mother Up enjoy a family photo shoot activity organized by Mother's Outreach Network

A recent study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that more than 70% of Black single mothers worry about paying their bills on a regular basis. These concerns are compounded by a lack of affordable childcare – forcing mothers to carefully plan their family life around work schedules and the availability of neighbors and relatives.

Inspired by the plight of these women, in 2010, Webb launched the Mother’s Outreach Union (later renamed the Women’s Outreach Network) to support Black mothers in the workforce. The organization initially focused on returning citizens – but eventually expanded to serve all Black mothers by providing know-your-rights trainings and other resources to help Black mothers obtain employment and provide for their families.

However, within a few short months, Webb began to notice another troubling trend – mothers who were losing custody of their children because of poverty.

“If you’re a mom and it takes 2-3 jobs to pay your rent, you’re going to leave your kids unsupervised – which is grounds for a neglect charge,” Webb shared. “If you’re struggling and you’re in an abusive relationship with a partner, you can have your child removed from you for failure to protect your child.”

“These poverty factors alone are not supposed to contribute to a removal, but they absolutely do.”

“Poverty is not neglect”

 Before long, Webb returned to the courtroom – this time representing mothers fighting to keep custody of their children.

Webb and volunteers from Mother's Outreach Network visit with women in the community to discuss their needs.

According to the National Women’s Law Center, 1 in 4 single mothers live in poverty in the District of Columbia – an overwhelming number of which are Black single mothers. In FY 2024, 84% of the children in DC’s foster care system were Black – despite the fact that Black Children only make up 52% of city’s child population.

The trend is one that Webb says is unfortunately not unique to the DMV. Nationwide, sociologists estimate that 53% of Black children will experience a Child Protective Service (CPS) investigation by their 18th Birthday.

“If you look at the instability that happens when you take children away from their families, it is far more violent and damaging than if you work with families to help keep them intact."

Webb pointed out that once parents lose custody of their children, they also lose access to almost all of their welfare benefits including WIC, Housing Assistance, and others – making it even harder for them to get to a position where they can get their children back.

“Eighty to Ninety percent of CPS cases involve neglect,” Webb shared. “We can eliminate the vast majority of these cases when we start addressing poverty.”

“Being in poverty does not mean you’re a bad parent.”

“We shouldn’t become a world where our first response is to pull a child out a family,” she added. “Our priority should be to provide more support and be more inclusive for families who are struggling. We need to do more to create a sense of belonging.”

Harnessing the Power of Guaranteed Income

The DC Guaranteed Income Coalition gathers at the Wilson Building to lobby DC Council Members to support guaranteed income initiatives

As Mother’s Outreach Network fought for mother’s rights in DC, Webb became aware of a national movement making waves in the economic mobility space – the push for guaranteed income.

Designed to help lift people out of poverty, guaranteed income pilots provide unconditional cash assistance to a targeted group of individuals living below the poverty line. Beginning in 2018, the movement gained considerable momentum following the COVID-19 pandemic and has inspired more than 100 programs across the country.

Among the most prominent of these programs is the Magnolia Mother’s Trust – a pilot based out of Jackson, Mississippi providing $1,000 to Black, low-income mothers for 12 months. Since 2018, the program has served more than 230 Black mothers, improving not only their economic outcomes, but also their emotional and physical wellbeing.

Inspired by their success, Webb began leading the charge to bring guaranteed income to the nation’s capital. She organized the DC Guaranteed Income Coalition – a coalition of community, philanthropic, and government partners advocating for cash transfer programs like Guaranteed Income pilots to combat poverty in DC and the Greater Washington region.

Through the Coalition, Webb’s advocacy has had a resounding impact on the Greater Washington region. Since the coalition was founded in 2020, twelve guaranteed income pilots have been organized across DC, Maryland, & Virginia – including several supported by The Community Foundation.

Click here to Read About The Community Foundation’s Guaranteed Income Pilot Initiatives!

Mother Up – A Guaranteed Income Pilot for Single Black Mothers

In 2023, Webb and Mother’s Outreach Network announced the launch of Mother Up – a Guaranteed Income pilot providing $500 a month for 3 years to Black mothers in DC living below the 250% Federal Poverty Level (ie making less than $36,000 a year).

The inaugural cohort of five mothers began receiving payments in the Spring of 2023 – with plans to enroll of a total of 50 mothers by the end of 2024 – thanks, in part to a grant from The Community Foundation’s Health Equity Fund.

While the program is still in it’s early stages, Webb shares that the reaction from participants has been extremely positive.

“Moms are reporting that they don’t have to pick between their kids in terms of buying extra clothing,” she shared. “They can pay off bills and debt and can finally afford to spend quality time with their children.”

In addition to providing monthly cash payments, Mother Up also offers additional programming through their Mothers Empowerment group, which provides participants the opportunity to learn about community resources, join fun families activities, and develop a community with other moms. However, Webb emphasized that participation in the group is entirely optional.

“We believe and respect that parents know what their needs are,” Webb explained. “We don’t force or require them to attend anything” – a stark contrast to many welfare initiatives that require participants to attend compulsory programming.

Webb explained that for Mother Up, the approach has paid off – as participants have not only attended events, but also gone out of their way to ask Mother’s Outreach Network for support with additional medical and mental health needs they have. Webb says that even though the organization can’t always meet those needs, the fact that participant’s are willing to be open and vulnerable about them is a positive sign.

“Our relationship with each of the mothers is so important to us,” Webb added. “We work hard to build their trust by valuing and understanding their needs and doing what we can to assist them however we can.”

The Power of a Woman Ready to Rise

Participants from Mothers Up join advocates from the DC Guaranteed Income Coalition in advocating before the DC Council.

Ultimately, Webb explains, the goal of Mother Up is to empower moms to become leaders for their families and communities. The program is working to empower participants to become advocates for their communities by providing them the training and resources to testify before the DC Council and share their lived in experience in other government and community convenings.

“We don’t have enough Black women leaders – especially when it comes to issues like economic justice for moms.”

“Moms are the experts,” Webb explained. “They are the ones who can talk most effectively about what is going on in their lives and dispel the negative and false tropes that often exist around Black motherhood. Their daughters should be the ones to talk about what is going on in their communities and advocate for safer communities.”

“They are the future of our community – and what a bright and beautiful future it can be – if we only take the time to invest in them.”

The Community Foundation is proud to partner with Melody Webb and Mother’s Outreach Network through our Health Equity Fund and the DC Coalition for Guaranteed Income to empower Black mothers and other low-income members of our community. For more information about Mother’s Outreach Network, visit www.mothersoutreachnetwork.org/  

Leaders of the Future: Female Leaders Inspiring Inclusion

In 2024, The Community Foundation is highlighting 'Leaders of the Future' - individuals and organizations who inspire us to look towards a brighter future for Greater Washington.

This month, in honor of International Women’s Day, we are highlighting incredible female leaders in our community that understand, advocate for, and inspire inclusion by promoting a sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment.

Our theme for March, ‘Inspire Inclusion’, coincides with the Annual theme of International Women’s Day 2024 and reflects The Community Foundation’s aspirations, as outlined in our most recent 2023 Annual Meeting.

• Audrey Lyon, Executive Director, Yachad DC

  1) What is your relationship to The Community Foundation?

  Yachad is a nonprofit partner with The Community Foudation’s Health Equity Fund

  2) “When we inspire others to understand and value inclusion, we forge a better world” – How does inspiring inclusion impact your community and the work that you do? Please include 1-2 brief examples of how you or your organization promote and inspire inclusion.

  Having a place to call home is the foundation for a good life and, for that matter, a better world. Inclusive communities are places that have achieved economic and racial equity. Owning a decent and safe home helps to ensure long-term well-being and financial security. Yachad’s home remediation work guarantees that lower-income Black and Brown homeowners, many of them female-headed households, have the ability to remain in their homes and their neighborhoods for years to come. We work to see that these families are not displaced as a result of gentrification but can benefit from new investments into their communities. After all, they deserve the same opportunity to strengthen their own and their families’ financial footing that so many other Americans enjoy.

  3) What does it mean to you to be a female leader? Why do you feel it’s important to understand, advocate for, and inspire inclusion – especially for future female leaders?

  As the Executive Director of Yachad, I engage in our work through my lived experience of a working mother with three children who understands the need for a functional home. I understand that if the roof leaks, the toilets don’t flush and I can’t make dinner for my family, I also can’t do my work that helps to pay the bills. We need more female leaders who understand the many roles we must play. That means it is important to include women with varied life experiences to share their concerns and their life stories so they can advocate for truly inclusive policies and ways to be in the world.

  4) In your opinion, what are the best ways to promote a sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment?

  As the “Golden Rule” states, if we truly (with my emphasis added) treat others in a manner that we want to be treated, then we are beginning to empower and create a sense of belonging for others. For example, everyone deserves a decent place to live – let’s start with that. If we equitably provide opportunities for everyone to live in good housing in welcoming communities, we provide a sense of relevance and belonging. With that sense of belonging, people feel empowered to take on greater challenges – to make the world a better place.

  5) When you imagine ‘a better world’ inspired by inclusion, what does that look like?

  A better world looks like some of Yachad’s homeowners who are proud of their homes, who are friendly with their neighbors and looking forward to inviting friends and family over for Sunday dinners. And who have a home that can nurture their own personal growth and that of their children.

• Mercedes Lamp, Executive Director, My Sister's Place

  1) What is your relationship to The Community Foundation?

  My Sister’s Place is a nonprofit partner through The Community Foundation’s Health Equity Fund.

  2) “When we inspire others to understand and value inclusion, we forge a better world” – How does inspiring inclusion impact your community and the work that you do? Please include 1-2 brief examples of how you or your organization promote and inspire inclusion.

  We deliver services in a manner that recognizes the structural barriers discourage full inclusion in our community. Our Cash Transfer program and our transitional housing programs allow the clients we serve to have a stable foundation from where they can better address other needs that can lead them to self-sufficiency and full inclusion in our community.

  3) What does it mean to you to be a female leader? Why do you feel it’s important to understand, advocate for, and inspire inclusion – especially for future female leaders?

  There are barriers and advantages to being a female leader. While female leaders need to work harder to be heard, we also are often nurturers and empathetic and have characteristics that allow us to excel in advocating and inspire inclusion. Inclusion often equates with success, financial and otherwise.

  4) In your opinion, what are the best ways to promote a sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment?

  The best way to promote belonging, relevance and empowerment is to see others who look like us in the place we want to belong, in places of empowerment and relevance.

  5) When you imagine ‘a better world’ inspired by inclusion, what does that look like?

  Inclusion would mean better representation of a diverse population in all areas, particularly in places of power and wealth.

• LaTara Harris, CEO, Crittenton Services of Greater Washington

  1) What is your relationship to The Community Foundation?

  The Community Foundation has been a wonderful partner to Crittenton Services of Greater Washington, and has funded some of our programs.

  2) ”When we inspire others to understand and value inclusion, we forge a better world” – How does inspiring inclusion impact your community and the work that you do? Please include 1-2 brief examples of how you or your organization promote and inspire inclusion.

  So often, we think “inclusion” means that everyone has a voice. But that’s not enough. We need to not only have a seat at the table while decisions are made, but we also need to hear from one another.

  Years ago, we asked our Crittenton girls what they wanted from their community. The overwhelming answer was that they wanted to be heard. In response, we established our annual Talk With a Teen Girl High Tea to connect girls with community leaders so they could share their stories, concerns, and hopes with others. Over the years our girls have talked about a range of issues, including the problem with being judged by their appearance, the importance of supporting other girls, the need to address mental health challenges, and their frustration when they see the inequitable distribution of resources in our region. At the Tea, our girls literally have a seat at the table and have the opportunity to be heard.

  Another way to foster inclusion is to tear down the real and imagined barriers that separate us. My mission in life through my work with girls and women is to ensure that we leave the door open for generations to follow which we've obtained via mentoring, shadowing, and a host of other ways.

  3) What does it mean to you to be a female leader? Why do you feel it’s important to understand, advocate for, and inspire inclusion – especially for future female leaders?

  Being a female leader means that we have the ability and responsibility to set the standard for other aspiring women, while encouraging them to reach their full potential. Rising to the ranks of CEO is no small feat. I found that my journey led to many pathways that I didn’t need to take, yet made me stronger, nonetheless. As a leader, it is my responsibility to share my experiences to help others along the way, and to be an example of a woman of integrity who advocates fiercely for others.

  4) In your opinion, what are the best ways to promote a sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment?

  The best way to promote a sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment is to celebrate the different things that communities bring to the table. We all have different perspectives, and talents. We all have something to give, and it’s up to leaders to show that we value everyone’s contribution.

  5) When you imagine ‘a better world’ inspired by inclusion, what does that look like?

  As a mother, and an advocate for women and girls, a better world is a world with less worry. Of course, we’ll always worry! But in an ideal world, all mothers—all parents—will worry about the everyday challenges that every child faces as they grow into the young men and women they’re meant to be. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream that “…the whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” Inclusion is absolutely necessary to keep that dream alive.

• Ashley Sharp, Marlboro Pike Partnership

  1) What is your relationship to The Community Foundation?

  I serve on the Executive Board of the Prince George’s County Emerging Leaders Impact Fund (ELIF)

  2) “When we inspire others to understand and value inclusion, we forge a better world” – How does inspiring inclusion impact your community and the work that you do? Please include 1-2 brief examples of how you or your organization promote and inspire inclusion.

  The very nature of the work that we do at the Marlboro Pike Partnership requires intentional coordination and inclusivity in order to achieve what we believe to be success. Our mission and strategic plan to revitalize the Marlboro Pike corridor requires vision that rooted in data but inspired by community. We are a collective of leaders committed to service at the grassroots level by empowering the community through education, outreach and engagement while simultaneously working with government agencies and private organizations to truly bring about change to the Marlboro Pike corridor. We view success as revitalization with community flavor and buy-in.

  3) What does it mean to you to be a female leader? Why do you feel it’s important to understand, advocate for, and inspire inclusion – especially for future female leaders?

  Through my experience, I’ve learned about many women pioneers throughout our history (some of which I’ve had the pleasure to work with), who often not only break through glass ceilings, but set a standard. As a minority woman in public service, we are often the backbone to a finished product left unseen.

  However, in the current international and political climate, the human race cannot afford to let women continue to blend into the background as hidden figures. Women have been and will continue to be not only innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists, doctors, lawmakers, negotiators and executives, but we are also mothers, sisters, daughters and mentors.

  To future female leaders, I offer two of my favorite quotes. The first is from Bessie Coleman, “Tell them that as soon as I can walk, I’m going to fly.” The second is an old Latin proverb, “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”

  4) In your opinion, what are the best ways to promote a sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment?

  Creating a space where respectful and open interactions can occur with consideration to small yet meaningful details to reduce barriers and increase understanding without judgement or misinformation.

  5) When you imagine ‘a better world’ inspired by inclusion, what does that look like?

  Every person having consideration for their neighbor and as a result strengthening the interconnectedness and overall safety of “the village”

• Anna Maria Izquierdo-Porrera, MD, PhD, Executive Director, Care for Your Health, Inc.

  1) What is your relationship to The Community Foundation?

  Care for Your Health, Inc is a nonprofit partner with The Community Foundation through the Sharing Montgomery Initiative.

  2) “When we inspire others to understand and value inclusion, we forge a better world” – How does inspiring inclusion impact your community and the work that you do? Please include 1-2 brief examples of how you or your organization promote and inspire inclusion.

  Inspiring others to understand and value inclusion is indeed a powerful catalyst for positive change in the world. When we recognize and respect the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences that each person brings to the table. When people feel included, they are more likely to contribute their unique talents and perspectives, leading to more effective problem-solving and decision-making processes. We have designed Care for Your Health, inc to allow its staff to thrive and bring the best they have to offer forward. Ultimately, by inspiring others to embrace inclusion, we not only create a more equitable and just society but also pave the way for a better world where diversity is celebrated and everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

  3) What does it mean to you to be a female leader? Why do you feel it’s important to understand, advocate for, and inspire inclusion – especially for future female leaders?

  Being a female leader allows me to leverage my strengths, experiences, and perspectives to inspire and drive positive change within organizations and communities, through my work at Care for Your Health. However, my role as a female leader goes beyond the impact my organization had in the community but it is also a source of inspiration to the women that see themselves reflected in my work.

  My role as a female leader provides a role model for aspiring leaders, particularly for other women and girls and brings a diverse perspective, viewpoints, experiences, and approaches to the leadership role. It also promotes a more fair and equitable world where people can lead if they have the talent to do so, regardless of gender. I hope that my striving for excellence also addresses stereotype regarding female leaders that will ultimately bring down systemic barriers and promote a more just and equitable society for all. Overall, my I envision my role as a female leader beyond the mere gender representation, but as a tool to harness the full potential of talent and diversity to create stronger, more resilient organizations and communities.

  4) In your opinion, what are the best ways to promote a sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment?

  Fostering belonging, relevance and empowerment is not a one time project but a way to understand, organizations, the community and the world as a whole. This requires building an environment where people's voices are heard and people are encouraged to express themselves, where people are provided opportunities to engage and thrive, where each individual contribution is acknowledged and appreciated, where everyone can grow and develop their full potential and ultimately where people are happy.

  5) When you imagine ‘a better world’ inspired by inclusion, what does that look like?

  A better world is a world where everyone has access to their human rights. This is a world where everyone can enjoy their inherent rights, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. This is a world where everyone has the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, the right to health, food and a roof over their head and their right to self-determination. We have plenty to do to get there, but this vision of a better world inspires me to get up every morning and put my best foot forward

Budgeting to End Homelessness in DC - A Letter to DC Mayor Bowser

Dear Mayor Bowser:

We are writing on behalf of the Greater Washington Community Foundation and its Partnership to End Homelessness Leadership Council to offer our recommendations on DC’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget. We urge you to prioritize ending chronic homelessness and making substantial investments in affordable housing and housing stability programs for DC households with extremely low-incomes (0-30 MFI).

Homelessness in DC increased about 12% from 2022 to 2023, the first time this has happened since 2016, when DC launched Homeward DC. This alarming news comes at a time when the District’s rate of investment in housing programs is declining. At the same time, rent continues to rise in DC making it harder for many people to afford to live in DC and evictions are also increasing.

As you know, the Partnership to End Homelessness is a collective effort of private sector business leaders, philanthropists, and national and local nonprofits working in alignment with the city’s comprehensive plan to ensure homelessness in DC is rare, brief, and non-recurring. The private sector and philanthropy play an important role in supporting and funding efforts to end homelessness, but the city’s success greatly depends on the leadership of the DC government to adequately fund and implement evidence-based solutions.

We understand that the city has financial challenges and that the District has many funding priorities to balance this year. However, we are deeply concerned that with the end of pandemic assistance programs, many DC residents are struggling economically and having trouble maintaining their housing. We urge you to prioritize the protection and expansion of programs that help residents obtain and maintain stable and affordable housing. Stable and affordable housing creates the conditions for healthy families and thriving communities, and helps DC advance its goals of achieving racial and economic equity for all its residents. We have the solutions to prevent and end homelessness, and under your leadership, the District has shown that it can make progress by putting resources behind these solutions. We urge you to  invest the necessary resources to continue making progress. 

Our FY 2025 budget recommendations align with the recommendations of our community advocacy partners.

Expand Permanent Supportive Housing to end chronic homelessness: We ask you to invest $36.6 million in Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) to end chronic homelessness for 1,260 single adults. We urge you to provide $22.8 million for PSH for 580 families. 

Support Emergency Rental Assistance: Census Bureau Household Pulse data estimates that 31,000 renters with incomes under $50,000 are behind on their rent in January 2024, or one-third of all low-income renters. Rents continue to rise sharply, even in rent-controlled units. The significant need for emergency rental assistance has time and again been demonstrated by the high volume of requests submitted and the fact that funds are repeatedly depleted long before the end of the fiscal year. Demand for emergency rental assistance is so great that the available ERAP application slots each quarter were filled within hours of opening the portal. We urge you to fund DC’s ERAP program at a minimum of $100 million in FY 2025.

Preserve Public Housing, Expand Affordable Housing: We urge you to commit to preserving and creating deeply affordable housing for households earning 0-30 percent of the Median Family Income (MFI). We recommend:

• Maintaining the $60 million annual commitment to repairing public housing.

• $17.3 million for 800 Local Rent Supplement Tenant Vouchers, to assist those on the DC Housing Authority waitlist.

Expand non-congregate shelter for people experiencing homelessness: The District should take steps to transform its shelter system to make them smaller, safer, and trauma informed. Shifting away from large congregate shelters is essential to supporting the dignity of unhoused residents but also to help them. We support the call for two shelters, funded at $13.3 million.

Support street outreach: Given the increase in unsheltered homelessness over the past year, we call on the District to provide $6.4 million for homeless street outreach to fully restore and expand outreach capacity of the Coordinated Street Outreach Network. 

Support medical respite:  We ask you to support 150 medical respite beds, to offer the critical service of caring for the unhoused who need intensive medical support.

Support and Expand Project Reconnect: Project Reconnect is a successful and cost-effective shelter diversion and rapid-exit program for unaccompanied adults experiencing homelessness. By maintaining existing funding for the program at $1.2 million, and adding an additional $545,000, the program can add diversion specialists to reach more people and prevent homelessness at scale.  

Maintain funding for DC Flex: DC Flex gives a yearly stipend of $7,200 to use on rent in the case of an emergency or in a case where a participant is unable to make rent. We urge you to maintain its $1 million funding as we assess this promising approach. 

Maintain 24/7 shelter access: DC expanded access to shelters during the pandemic so that individuals could stay in and/or access the buildings around the clock. We urge you to continue this practice, which will require $8.4 million. 

Create a fund to cover PSH move-in expenses:  The District should create a fund to cover one-time move-in expenses for residents receiving a voucher. Assistance with transportation to find a unit, obtaining necessary documents, and IDs, plus help to purchase household items is critical to ensuring that a voucher can be used quickly.      

Address the critical need for affordable housing: DC will not end chronic homelessness until we address the critical need for affordable housing. We ask that you: 

• Increase the supply of Tenant Based Local Rent Supplement (LRSP) vouchers, including TAH.

• Ensure that the Housing Production Trust Fund meets the target of at least 50 percent of funding dedicated to producing housing for extremely low-income households (0-30% MFI). We urge you to fund an adequate number of LRSP vouchers to meet the important targeting requirement of the Trust Fund to produce deeply affordable housing.

• Ensure all produced affordable housing is accessible.

Housing stability is the foundation of thriving individuals, families and communities. Any long-term vision for a stronger DC must start with ending homelessness and addressing the high rates of housing instability. We must not let the District’s finances this year result in long-term harm to our neighbors with the least resources. Stable and affordable housing is the key to creating healthy communities, which in turn supports school success, reduces crime, and narrows DC’s racial income and wealth gaps.

Thank you again for your leadership and commitment to ending homelessness in our city. We urge you to continue to make progress in FY 2025 towards ending homelessness and increasing the supply of deeply affordable housing for extremely low income households.

Sincerely,

The Partnership to End Homelessness Leadership Council

Tonia Wellons, President & CEO

Greater Washington Community Foundation

Leaders of the Future: Black Leaders in the Push for Economic Justice

In 2024, The Community Foundation is highlighting 'Leaders of the Future' - individuals and organizations who inspire us to look towards a brighter future for Greater Washington.

To kick off our "Leaders of the Future" campaign , we invited incredible Black leaders from across the region to share their experiences, including their insights into the movement for socio-economic justice.

• Michael Echols, Founder/CEO, MAX Cybersecurity

  What is your relationship to The Community Foundation?

  I am the incoming Chair of the Prince George's County Community Foundation.

  Why do you think economic justice is important?

  Economic justice stands as the lynchpin of an equitable society, providing the necessary foundation upon which all other facets of social justice can thrive. It serves as the cornerstone of hope, instilling in individuals the belief that their efforts and contributions will be met with fair and just outcomes. Whether one is laboring through two jobs or pursuing an entrepreneurial endeavor, it is in the pursuit of alignment with a system that recognizes and rewards diligence and innovation. Without economic justice, the promise of opportunity and upward mobility remains elusive, perpetuating cycles of inequality and disenfranchisement. Therefore, ensuring economic justice is not merely a matter of fairness, but a fundamental prerequisite for fostering a society where every individual can fulfill their potential and contribute meaningfully to the collective well-being.

  What does economic justice look like? Please describe how you or your organization promote or cultivate economic justice?

  Economic justice encompasses a multifaceted approach aimed at ensuring fair and equitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and benefits within society. It involves addressing systemic inequalities and barriers to economic participation, as well as promoting policies and practices that empower marginalized communities and promote economic well-being for all.

  I consider myself a pioneering figure in attempting to assure equal opportunities field of cybersecurity, I seek economic justice for the community and the nation through advocacy and actions. I understand that economic disparities can significantly impact communities, particularly those historically marginalized or underrepresented in the technology sector. Access to the Internet, to training and employment opportunities are critical for fair representation. This is important as everything will be digitized in our near future. Therefore, my efforts center on actively working to dismantle barriers to entry in the cybersecurity field, advocating for increased access to education, training, and job opportunities for individuals from diverse backgrounds.

  My efforts extend beyond individual empowerment to systemic change. I collaborate with government agencies, educational institutions, and industry partners to develop initiatives that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the cybersecurity workforce. By advocating for policies that prioritize economic justice, such as equitable hiring practices and investment in underserved communities, I aim to create a more inclusive and resilient economy that benefits everyone.

  Furthermore, I recognize the interconnectedness of economic justice with other forms of social justice. So, I actively support initiatives that address systemic issues such as racial inequality, gender discrimination, and socioeconomic disparities, recognizing that these factors intersect and compound to perpetuate economic injustice.

  What does it mean to be a Black leader or to promote and cultivate Black leadership?

  Fostering Black leadership involves actively addressing systemic barriers and structural inequalities that impede the advancement of Black individuals into leadership roles. The next "team" should not run into the same barriers and wall. This is done by This advocating for policies and practices that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, while also challenging systemic racism. By making my back available to carry others who will move far beyond where my years will take the community we are carrying on a tradition started during the days of slavery.

  By advocating for social justice reforms and creating more equitable opportunities for leadership and success within the Black community and society at large, we can do more than just cultivate leaders. rather, we can thrust them forward and allow the choice of paths. My conditions now will not be the ones faced by the tip of the spear five years from now. Empowering the next generation to be impactful means providing the tools and letting them use what is in the tool bag in a manner appropriate to the positive change and progress.

  When you reflect on Black History in the Greater Washington region, what does the next chapter of Black History look like to you?

  The forthcoming chapter of Black history in the Greater Washington region embodies a narrative of hope, progress, and collective action towards a more inclusive and equitable society. It envisions a future where the legacy of resilience and triumph among Black communities continues to inspire generations, fostering increased representation, equity, and justice across all facets of life.

  The question is how do we empower the next generation to roll forward with minimal speedbumps in their path? And, what tools do we need to provide them enabling an ability to smoothly overcome challenges we are sure they will face?

  The next chapter of Black history will involve the dismantling of systemic racism and the implementation of policies that promote social justice and equity for all. Success will be measured by the achievement of objectives. One of them is that Black individuals are not only recognized for their contributions to the region's history, but also for their ongoing leadership in shaping its future.

• Courtney Stewart, founder/CEO, The National Re-entry Network for Returning Citizens

  What is your relationship to The Community Foundation?

  The Community Foundation was one of the first organizations to fund us - we have had a successful partnership with them for over 5 years.

  Why do you think economic justice is important?

  The main reason is because when you look at the inequality around society, most of the problems are within the top 1%. The scales are so unbalanced that greed, dysfunction, and power imbalances in society become cyclical, fueling one another. We've forgotten about the "my brother's keeper" mentality.

  What does economic justice look like? Please describe how you or your organization promote or cultivate economic justice?

  Economic justice looks like a fairer justice system for returning citizens by meeting all of their needs and giving them the opportunity to succeed so that we might help them see a path for themselves outside of the criminal legal space on their own, without the shackles of supervision or monitoring. It looks like pouring resources into people and removing barriers to their success and wellbeing.

  What does it mean to be a Black leader or to promote and cultivate Black leadership?

  Black Leadership is about owning up to past wrongs, enduring a slow ground-up approach, being a sacrificial lamb, practicing the principles of integrity, truth, and love. Leading by example without the celebrity and understanding that we have to be the change we want to see, with patience and tolerance.

  When you reflect on Black History in the Greater Washington region, what does the next chapter of Black History look like to you?

  Enduring strength, youth leadership, supporting and encouraging our black men. Building community and promoting a restorative justice model.

• Patrice Sulton, Executive Director, DC Justice Lab

  What is your relationship to The Community Foundation?

  DC Justice Lab is lucky to have been included in two important grant-making programs from the foundation. When we were first getting up and running, we received funds to help with our operational costs and capacity building. Last year, we were selected as part of its groundbreaking deep investment into local policy advocacy and systems change, under the Health Equity Fund.

  Why do you think economic justice is important?

  People who live in Georgetown live an average of 27 years longer than people who live in Anacostia. Many of the social determinants of health are impacted by seismic income and wealth disparities in our city.

  What does economic justice look like? Please describe how you or your organization promote or cultivate economic justice?

  DC Justice Lab is promoting economic justice by combatting the criminalization of poverty and fighting for reparations for Black Washingtonians.

  What does it mean to be a Black leader or to promote and cultivate Black leadership?

  Finding new strategies for civic participation and political education has been the most rewarding part of our recent work. We are investing in Black-led organizations through our Policy Training Academy, preparing future movement lawyers through our DC Justice Fellow program and Policy Advocacy Competition, and teaching community members how to change systems through our DC Justice Library. We know that positioning people to step into and fully express their own power is more transformative than anything we could do alone.

  When you reflect on Black History in the Greater Washington region, what does the next chapter of Black History look like to you?

  The next chapter of Black History looks like Black Unity. After two generations of dividing our communities based on poverty and subjugating people who have been system-involved, it is time for a unified pro-Black movement for changing and dismantling institutions that harm us.

• Courtney Hall, CEO, Interfaith Works

  What is your relationship to The Community Foundation?

  Interfaith Works (IW) and the Greater Washington Community Foundation serve as strategic partners. Primarily, the Community Foundation supports our emergency financial assistance program, Connections. Additionally, IW and The Community Foundation are co-hosting a Faith and Philanthropy forum on February 27, with a specific focus on economic justice in Montgomery County.

  Why do you think economic justice is important?

  Economic equity ensures that our neighbors in Montgomery County have an opportunity to earn a livable wage sufficient to live without public assistance like rental subsidies, SNAP, or other government cash assistance.

  What does economic justice look like? Please describe how you or your organization promote or cultivate economic justice?

  Interfaith Works has been serving people who experience poverty for 52 years. Last year, we served 35,000 Montgomery County residents. Our programs are centered around removing systemic and economic barriers that prevent residents from achieving stability and thriving. Sadly, there are deeper systemic challenges that must also be addressed. In Montgomery County, one must earn $35/hr to afford an average two-bedroom apartment. This is out of reach for many in Montgomery County, where the minimum hourly wage is $16.70. This disparity explains the surge in demand that Interfaith Works has seen for our shelter, supportive housing, food and clothing distribution, emergency financial assistance, and job placement services.

  While our programs have been expanded significantly to meet the demand, the need continues to grow. At the macro level, IW hosts forums on critical issues like homelessness, affordable housing, and food insecurity. We also routinely engage with elected officials and business leaders to ensure they remain aware of the difficulties faced by our clients. Through these efforts, we help ensure that the community remains engaged with solutions to the challenges affecting our neighbors.

  Recently, Interfaith Works launched a collaboration with a data analysis firm to understand better the conditions in our community that cause the continued need for our services. While we do not yet have firm answers, we are certain that solutions will center around economic justice.

  What does it mean to be a Black leader or to promote and cultivate Black leadership?

  I have the privilege of leading Interfaith Works, a 190-person nonprofit organization that serves 35,000 people each year who experience poverty. In Montgomery County, Black people disproportionately experience poverty, relative to the population size. As CEO, I work with our dedicated team to ensure that these services reach the people with the greatest need and that clients are treated in an equitable and dignified manner. I also support Black leaders in the County as Board Treasurer for The Montgomery County Black Collective. The Collective creates space for underrepresented businesses to access resources that have long been unavailable to the Black community – a barrier that has prevented many from achieving economic security.

  When you reflect on Black History in the Greater Washington region, what does the next chapter of Black History look like to you?

  In the wake of recent stories about workplace racism, I am concerned that some Black professionals may avoid leadership opportunities for fear of being mistreated. This trepidation is legitimate. Unfortunately, when Black leaders are missing from the table, they cannot influence decisions and their unique viewpoints are not represented. This has a direct effect on the broader Black community and can affect how information and resources are distributed.

  For the next chapter of Black History to be bright, businesses in the Greater Washington community must double down on efforts to create nurturing work environments. It is also crucial that we lead the way in addressing workplace maltreatment, which is experienced by too many Black employees. Taking these steps will help ensure that our community is enhanced for everyone.

• Byron Johns, Co-Founder, Black & Brown Coalition for Educational Equity & Excellence

  What is your relationship to The Community Foundation?

  The BBC is a recipient of funding from the Community Foundation to support our mission of addressing systemic barriers in public education.

  Why do you think economic justice is important?

  Economic Justice empowers marginalized people and communities to be self reliant and productive participants that creates social mobility, independence and prosperity across generations.

  What does economic justice look like? Please describe how you or your organization promote or cultivate economic justice?

  Education is proven enabler of social mobility and economic prosperity, so our focus has been on dismantling systemic barriers in public education that limit access to resources and opportunities for Black, Brown, and students from low income families.

  What does it mean to be a Black leader or to promote and cultivate Black leadership?

  Effective Black leadership is fully cognizant of the diverse historical, cultural, and social fabric that makes up Black communities, and the many racially motivated challenges we’re still facing. However, building relationships to forge new pathways and create mutually beneficial solutions with other communities is critical to making progress.

  When you reflect on Black History in the Greater Washington region, what does the next chapter of Black History look like to you?

  I believe we are at a critical inflection point. Our traditional Black institutions have been weakened, and the community values that protected and helped us make progress together for generations are waning. The trajectory of next chapters of Black History will depend on how effectively we collaborate with like-minded people, especially in ensuring our children have access to a high-quality education that prepares them to compete globally and build economic justice and prosperity for our communities.

birdSEED Foundation: Planting Seeds of Hope for Black First-Time Homeowners

birdSEED recipient Tiffany (Coco) Brown, at her new home in Prince George’s County.

For years, Tiffany (Coco) Brown had dreamed of accomplishing something that no one else in her family had ever done before – purchasing a house that she could call home.

“I wanted someplace where my family could gather and be together,” Coco shared. “Someplace safe that we could call ‘ours’.”

Like many Black families in the Greater Washington region, as a child Coco’s parents could only afford to rent their home in Washington, DC. As economic conditions in the housing market turned, Coco remembers moving several times over the course of her childhood, leaving behind friends and childhood memories as the family sought out a new place to live.

“Growing up, I knew I wanted to live in my own house,” Coco shared. “I just wasn’t sure where to start.”

In 2021, Coco decided to pursue her dream of becoming a homeowner. But while navigating the world of real estate can be complicated for just about anybody, studies show that it has been historically – even deliberately – complex for people of color.

According to a recent study by the National Association of Realtors, only 44% of Black Americans are homeowners – compared to 73% of White Americans. The disparity, which is built on a foundation of decades of redlining and discriminatory lending practices, represents the largest racial homeownership gap in the past decade.

“There’s not very many things out there for people who look like me,” she added. “When it comes to buying a house, we don’t have the resources or the information to get the help we need.”

Over the course of her housing search, Coco went through four different realtors, mountains of paperwork, and dozens of house tours. She also enrolled in several programs designed to help first-time homebuyers – which she soon discovered involved even more paperwork and strict eligibility requirements.

“Pack your patience,” she recalled of her experience. “It’s a lot.”

That was when she heard about the Housing Justice & Down Payment Assistance Program at the birdSEED Foundation – a non-profit organization born from a collaboration between Flock DC – which provided the initial funding to seed the program - and the Greater Washington Community Foundation. The program provides grants of $5,000 - $15,000 to Black & Brown first-time homebuyers with no strings attached.

“This is our work to do – helping those who have been historically disadvantaged to purchase homes,” shared lisa wise, CEO of Flock DC and founder of birdSEED.

birdSEED is boldly branded as a ‘housing justice’ initiative – a starting point for reparations from an industry that has played a major role in the creation of the racial wealth gap.

“Homeownership is one of the most effective ways that Americans build intergenerational wealth,” Darius Graham, Managing Director of Community Investment at The Community Foundation stated. “And even though equal access to housing is a civil right enshrined in our nation’s laws, systemic racism within housing institutions have kept communities of color from accessing it for far too long.”­

“[birdSEED] isn’t about philanthropy,” wise added. “It’s about wealth creation; it’s about transferring and building wealth – and creating a model for the rest of the business community that we hope others will follow.”

birdSEED was designed to take away as many barriers for Black and Brown homebuyers to receive support, as possible. The application process is kept intentionally simple and is open year-round, with grants awarded twice a year by a panel of volunteer advisory board members. Once awarded, grant recipients have 120 days to close on a home and release the funds, which are managed by The Community Foundation.

“We are laser focused on making no strings attached down payment grants,” Leslie Case, Executive Director of birdSEED added. “If we can focus more on the giving and less on the accountability, we believe we can give more and have a bigger impact.”

Since its launch in September 2020, birdSEED has awarded 41 provisional grants to help Black and Brown first-time homebuyers – including Coco -- get one step closer to their dream of home ownership.

“birdSEED was a lifesaver,” Coco said. “Without them, I don’t think I would have gone to closing.”

Coco submitted her birdSEED application in September 2022—and within a month was awarded a $10,000 provisional grant. Five months later, Coco closed on her dream home in Hillcrest Heights in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

“The fact that [the homebuying search] is over, is such a stress reliever,” Coco shared, as she approaches her one-year anniversary of homeownership. “To be able to spend holidays, birthdays, and game nights in my own space with the ones I love is a wonderful experience.”

While wise, Case, and The Community Foundation celebrate the success of birdSEED, we also acknowledge how much work remains to be done to close the racial homeownership gap. Of the 41 provisional grants awarded to Black and Brown first-time homebuyers through birdSEED, some of them have still been unable to close on a house – a humbling testament to the many challenges that first-time homebuyers of color must overcome on the road to homeownership.

Despite the challenges, wise and Coco say that birdSEED provides a beacon of hope that they hope will continue to spread to more members of the Greater Washington community.  

“A lot of people ask what they can do – especially when confronted with big issues like the racial wealth gap,” wise said. “You can start with this –a down payment towards building a more equitable community. It may seem like a small step – but it’s a huge step in the right direction.”

One evidence of that hope came from Coco, who when asked what advice she had for fellow aspiring homeowners, simply stated the following:

“If I can do it, you can do it”

The Community Foundation is proud to award the birdSEED Foundation with a $100,000 grant to support homeownership for residents of Prince George’s County and Montgomery County. The investment is part of our Together, We Prosper campaign investment strategy to close the racial wealth gap in the Greater Washington region. For more information, visit our website or contact [email protected]

Health in All Policies – A New Way of Thinking About Advocacy

What do a bus route, a new grocery store, a public housing complex, and a new public school all have in common?

The answer may not seem obvious, but groups across the country argue that this common denominator – considering health in public policy - is critical to the longevity and wellbeing of communities.

Last month, the Health Equity Fund convened its third grant partner learning series event to explore how leading with this concept could help magnify their advocacy efforts.

“It is critical that we consider health first in public policy,” Dr. Keshia Pollack Porter, Bloomberg Centennial Chair at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health explained. “Integrating and articulating health considerations into policymaking across sectors has the potential to improve the health and wellbeing for thousands – particularly for communities of color.”

The idea of leading with Health in All Policies (HiAP) is not a new concept. Over the past decade, the approach has been championed by major health agencies like the CDC, the World Health Organization, and others as a way to build a stronger, more resilient health system.

The idea is that by promoting health, equity, and sustainability considerations while engaging a broader array of stakeholders, policymakers can ultimately build a system that works better for everyone.

As the DC government prepares to release its budget, many nonprofit partners with the Health Equity Fund hope that promoting a Health in All Policies mindset will have an impact that carries over into FY25 and beyond.

Dr. Keshia Pollack Porter, Bloomberg Centennial Chair at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health outlines Health in All Policies for Health Equity Partners.

“Health in All Policies is critical to helping us achieve health equity,” Dr. Pollack Porter shared. “Policymakers and agencies must understand that healthcare (and the gaps that exist in healthcare) aren’t confined within the walls of a hospital. Community Health is so much more than that.”

However, Dr. Pollack Porter explained that for many government agencies – especially those that operate in silos - adopting a mindset of Health in All Policies can take some time to implement.

“Collaboration has to be a physical activity,” Christina Henderson, DC Council Member (At-Large) and Chair of DC’s Council on Health shared. “By naming it [Health in All Policies], we force people to be more intentional and explicit in considering how their actions have broader impact – not only across their agencies or departments, but across our community.”

Council Member Henderson joined Dr. Pollack Porter and Dr. Arnetto Arno, Director of the DC Office of Health Equity, to share how Health in All Policies has been implemented at the DC Government level. She explained that while the DC government has made a lot of progress, there is still a lot of work to do to catch the vision of Health in All Policies.

“There’s so much more that goes into the health of a person than just access to health insurance,” Council Member Henderson explained, pointing out that DC ranks among the top cities in the nation for enrollment in Medicaid – but lags far behind in other critical areas like access to healthcare.

“We have to look outside of the data; outside of our departments, and see what’s really happening,” Dr. Arno shared. “Too often the data and averages that we use to formulate public policy mask the inequities that keep us from moving forward.”

“Health in All Policies is about taking a broader approach to find a better way to advance the policies that can make a difference.”

Dr. Arno added that the most rewarding and fulfilling work of Health in All Policies actually comes – not from the data – but from engaging with the community.

“If we’re hearing from community members, our policies simply aren’t going to get where they need to be.”

Dr. Arno’s assessment was echoed by several national advocates of the Health in All Policies framework – including Rachel Rosekind of Write You Are and Roxanne Carrillo Garza of Health Contra Costa (formerly Healthy Richmond CA) – who joined the event via zoom.

“It can’t be understated how important it is to seek out community engagement and input from those with lived experience,” Garza shared. “Lived experience is just as valuable – if not more so – when it comes to impacting the life of a community, than policy experience.”

“We need to help agencies change how they think about their processes,” Mark Humowiecki of the Camden Coalition added. “We don’t want them medicalizing their services – we just want them to be more mindful of how their processes can positively or negatively impact the health of our community.”

“As we leave this event, may we all be more intentional about incorporating Health in All Policies into our regular vocabulary,” Dr. Marla Dean, Senior Director of the Health Equity Fund shared at the conclusion. “As we seek to lead with Health in All Policies in our advocacy work, we move closer to achieving health equity.” 

For more information about the Greater Washington Community Foundation’s Health Equity Fund, visit our website!

Out of School Activity Scholarships for DC Students Now Available!

Update: Due to unprecedented response, The Community Foundation has paused accepting new applications for the Learn 24 OST Scholarship program.

If you would like to be notified if the application is reopened, please send an email to [email protected] to be placed on the waitlist.

Looking for fun and meaningful activities for your child this year? Additional funds for youth Scholarships for DC Students are now available through Learn24’s OST Youth Scholarship Program.

Learn24 is a network that supports equitable access to high-quality, Out-of-School-Time (“OST”) programs for the District’s students. Managed by the Greater Washington Community Foundation, Learn24’s  OST Youth Scholarship Program provides funding to help students and their families – especially those with specific needs – access the programs they need to strengthen their education, health, and well-being outside of school.

Examples of programs that the scholarship may support include, but are not limited to, programs designed specifically for students with disabilities, advanced learners, and English Language Learners.

Scholarships of up to $10,000 are available for individual students for use in approved OST activities, including both current fall activities and those expected to begin with the start of the new calendar year and summer 2024. The minimum scholarship award is $1,000. Scholarships are awarded based on individual need and availability of funding. Scholarship funds can be used for any OST activities that have a cost association up to the total scholarship amount.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and must be submitted online, using the link provided. No hard copy, email or faxed proposals will be accepted. Applications are reviewed periodically by The Community Foundation and approved by Learn24. Applicants will be notified of funding decisions within 4 weeks of application submission.

For those seeking additional information, click here to read the full RFP or watch this orientation video if you are interested in applying. The RFP and video are both available in Spanish (see below).

If you have questions, please contact Benton Murphy at [email protected]

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Becas Extraescolar disponibles
para Jovenes de DC

Actualización: Debido al alto cantidad de respuestas, The Community Foundation no esta aceptando nuevas aplicaciones para el Learn 24 OST Scholarship program en este momento. Si te gustaria ser notificada cuando la aplicación reabre, por favor manda un email a [email protected] para ser colocada en una lista de espera.

¿Estás en busca de actividades divertidas y significativas para su hijo este año? Ahora están disponibles fundos adicionales para becas para estudiantes de DC por medio del OST Youth Scholarship Program de Learn24

Learn24 es un rede que ayuda los estudiantes de DC a conseguir acceso equitativo a programación de alta-calidad extraescolares (Out-of-School)(OST). Administrado por the Greater Washington Community Foundation (Fundación Comunitaria de Greater Washington), el OST Youth Scholarship de Learn24 proporciona fundos para ayudar estudiantes y sus familias – especialmente los con necesidades específicas – a conseguir acceso a los programas que necesitan para fortalecer su educación, salud, y bienestar fuera de la escuela.

Ejemplos de los programas que califiquen para la aplicación de esta beca incluyen pero no se limitan a programas designada específicamente para estudiantes con discapacidades, estudiantes avanzadas, y estudiantes aprendiendo inglés.

Becas para estudiantes individuales de hasta $10,000 están disponibles para uso en actividades aprobados de OST – incluyendo actividades de otoño que ya están en curso y los que están programado para empezar en el año nuevo o el verano de 2024. La cantidad mínima de las becas es $1,000. Becas son adjudicados dependiente de la necesidad individual y la disponibilidad de los fundos. Becas pueden ser utilizadas para cualesquiera actividades de OST que tienen una cuesta asociada hasta la cantidad total de la beca.

Las aplicaciones serán aceptas de manera continua y deben ser presentadas online, usando el link providenciado. Propuestas de papel, email, o fax no serán aceptas. Aplicaciones están revisados periódicamente por The Community Foundation y aprobado por Learn24. Aplicantes serán notificado de las decisiones de los fundos entre 4 semanas de presentar la aplicación.

Para los que buscan informaciones adicionales, clique aquí para ler el Request for Proposals (solicitud para propuestas)(RFP) completo o asistir este vídeo de orientación para los que están interesados en aplicar. Ambos el vídeo y RFP están disponibles en español.

Para preguntas adicionales, contacta Yorman Delarosa a [email protected]