Transcript: In March we awarded $500,000 in grants!

In a podcast interview, Grants Manager Mavis Gruver describes some of our new grants and grant partners. Below is the transcript of that interview.

Learn about our inspiring grant partners: Sojourn to the Past, Maitri, and Girl Scouts of Northern California Got Choices.

The Foundation recently awarded $500,000 in grants. Can you tell us about one of our new grant partners?

One of our new grants through the YWCA of Mid-Peninsula Donor Advised Fund is to an organization called Sojourn to the Past.

They take high school students from California, mainly from the Bay Area, to the American South to learn about the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and the 60s.

The students are taken on a van tour for about 10 days throughout the South and are mentored by people, now elders, who were involved in the movement at that time.

The students get school credit for this course: they learn about nonviolent social justice advocacy, the history of the movement, and they come up with their own action plans so, when they come back to their schools, they have an action plan for something in their school or in their community that they would want to work on and address.

Ultimately, these students take the skills and the history that they learned and invest it in their own communities.
 

Can you tell us about one of our returning grant partners?

One of our returning grant partners is Maitri. They are based in Santa Clara County, California, and they work with women and families in the South Asian community who are escaping various forms of violence or domestic abuse.

Their work is heavily supported by volunteers. They have an all-volunteer board and a very small, but dynamic, paid staff. They run a domestic violence shelter, a hotline, and community education and outreach programs both in the South Asian community and the broader community.

Their goal is to educate service providers, law enforcement and other community members about the special dynamics in the South Asian community that might impact the way these women and their families are dealing with family stress and as well as to show that these problems can be solved in a culturally sensitive way.

Another one of our returning grant partners in a special program through the Girl Scouts of Northern California called the Got Choices. It works with young women aged 12 to 19 who are at risk of or currently are in juvenile hall.

They work with these young women on building life skills and self-confidence through trainings, as well as taking them on Girl Scouts programs that are open to all Girl Scouts in Northern California.

So these girls, who are often excluded from regular school programs or activities, get to become full participants in Girl Scouts training on entrepreneurship, leadership skills, and making healthy choices.

This is a great program that really works with some girls who are having a hard time and may be at risk for their futures and it not only builds their confidence and their skills, but also it includes them in a broader community in a way that they often do not have an opportunity to engage with.