2020 Grant Recipients
In 2020, the Beacon group made grants totaling $154k to 12 nonprofit organizations.
Brooklyn Boatworks
Brooklyn Boatworks (BB) uses boat building to inspire young people (mostly middle school students) to build confidence and learn new skills in and out of classrooms. BB offers three programs: (1) the core in-school program included 13 classes this year; (2) a summer program open to children ages 5-18 that re-enforces STEM skills and teamwork; and (3) an alumni program that runs year-round to help give alumni access to STEM learning and field trips designed to encourage advanced education. In 2019/2020, 11 schools offered the BB boat building program to their students. BB prioritizes Title 1 schools. Students that participate often have learning, behavioral or social issues. Depending on the school, students are either selected by the school to participate or elect to participate on their own. At the end of the semester, there is usually a graduation ceremony where the students get to sail on the board they built themselves. The Beacon grant will help fund a part-time instructor and a program coordinator as well as supplies needed to build the boats.
DRIVE CHANGE
Drive Change is committed to fostering healthy workplace environments for formerly incarcerated young adults (ages 18 to 25). Drive Change seeks to equip previously incarcerated youth with the tools needed to succeed in the food service industry and to develop skills to become leaders in their communities. Drive Change began as a single food truck used to hire and train youth upon release from jail. After recognizing the limitations of a single food truck, which could only support 4-5 people at a time, and lack of scalability, the business model expanded and evolved. Since 2018 it includes an industrial kitchen where up to 36 Fellows complete an 8-month paid fellowship that focuses on culinary arts training. Fellows are then placed into living-wage jobs.
Drive Change has 2-part approach that includes fellows and a network of restaurants and food business partners that apply to be part of Hospitality for Social Justice’s network to provide a workplace for formerly incarcerated youth. The network currently consists of 12 partners, each of which commits to providing 3-5 paid work trial opportunities.
Over the last 6 years, Drive Change has worked with about 80 youth and of those only 2 have been re-arrested. They have a dedicated alumnae community the organization stays in touch with and some serve as mentors. The Beacon grant will provide general operating support.
ELITE LEARNERS
Elite Learners (EL) focuses on mentoring at-risk youth (middle and high school) in some of New York City's poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods (Brownsville, Flatbush, and East New York). EL operates in schools, juvenile detention centers, and in its two learning centers. EL seeks to build a “community support system” in neighborhoods where it operates to support at-risk youths.
EL began in one school serving 20 students, and now works in 15 schools and detention centers, serving over 650 students. They operate a diverse range of programs. For example, in addition to academic skills programs include beauty and barbering, chess prep, and boxing. Many of the participants experience food insecurity and periods of homelessness. The Beacon grant will provide general operating support.
HARTLEY HOUSE
Founded in 1897, the Hartley House’s mission has been to help enhance and enrich the lives and expand opportunity for the inhabitants of Hell's Kitchen, initially one of New York City's poorest neighborhoods. Currently, Hartley operates three programming divisions --- the Afterschool and Summer Day Camp Program, Growing Responsibly and Delivering Services (GRADS), and the Home Outreach Program for Elders (HOPE). Hartley currently serves a constituency of over 1,000 residents of the surrounding community, with an age range from 5 to 105. Hartley's grant will provide salary support for its social work staff for the HOPE program for seniors.
JEREMIAH PROGRAM
The Jeremiah Program (JP) was founded in Minneapolis, MN in 1998. Their mission is “to disrupt the cycle of poverty for single mothers and their children two generations at a time.” This work spans "Five Key Pillars": Career-track college education for the mothers; Quality early education for the children; Affordable and safe housing; Empowerment and life skills training; Ongoing community support. Since its inception, the program has expanded to Austin, TX; Boston, MA; Fargo, ND, St Paul, MN; Rochester SE, MN; and most recently to Brooklyn, NY.
The original program in Minneapolis - their established Mid-West template -- provides campus housing for the mothers and their children with early childhood classrooms and meeting rooms on the ground floors. The lack of affordable real estate in NYC made this untenable for Brooklyn. Instead, JP in Brooklyn works with Community Solutions to provide housing support, Medgar Evers College to support the mothers' educational goals, and is beginning the development process for the first cohort of early childhood education. JP central provides oversight of the program. The Beacon grant will coordinate and support services for 30 single mothers and their children in Brownsville.
LATINAS ON THE VERGE of EXCELLENCE (L.O.V.E.)
L.O.V.E. started in 2012 as a mentoring program for Latinas concentrating on the development of study skills to improve academic performance, career readiness, including panels and college tours and scholarship workshops. It began as a pilot program at NYU and transitioned into an after-school program in high schools. Feedback from participants helped create a curriculum, which is now focused on improving mental health, reproductive health, and drop-out rates with some work on access to college.
The program now operates in 3 boroughs: Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. It is no longer an after-school program but is now part of the health program in many NYC schools as an elective class. The Beacon grant will be used to retain current staff and support a new position of Development Associate.
NEW YORK CENTER FOR CHILDREN
The New York Center for Children (NYCC) is the only independent center in New York City to provide free, comprehensive evaluation and therapy services to child victims of physical and sexual abuse and their families, for as long as their healing requires. Over the past 25 years, NYCC has provided life changing therapy to more than 15,000 children and their families. They also have an educational component, providing training programs on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of child abuse, attended by medical students, doctors, nurses and first responders worldwide. They treat children from the ages of 3-23 at a clinic on the upper east side, on an average of 125-200 a year. It is not a mental health clinic; it provides services solely in specialized abuse (and any resulting trauma). Each social worker, highly trained in trauma intervention, carries a caseload of approximately 20 kids, seen once a week for as long as needed. Individual therapy sessions are supplemented with group therapy, Tutoring, psychiatric consultation, and medical services. The program is ongoing, with an excellent track record of retaining children and families in therapy.
NYCC also provides court documentation of trauma, will testify in court, and will accompany children and families to court appearances and trials. Most children under fourteen will live with the non-offending parent if that is the particular situation and group and family therapy will be provided. During COVID, they have been doing telephone and video counseling.
The Beacon grant will support the therapy program to help children heal from abuse.
NYC SALT
NYC SALT was founded in 2008 by Alicia Hansen, a highly successful professional photographer with 20 years of experience She began NYC SALT as a small after-school photography class in Washington Heights to provide a catalyst and expand life possibilities for underserved youth through exposure to the arts, digital technology, academic preparation, and access to professional networks, NYC SALT now serves 150-200 youth aged 14-24 years old annually-in their own studio, as well as in schools and community centers--year-round. SALT creates opportunities in the visual arts and pathways to college by engaging students in a rigorous blend of professional photography instruction, college-preparatory workshops, and career exposure and opportunities in the visual arts field. The goal is to help student artists build advanced arts skills and the determination, confidence, and perseverance they need to succeed in college and future careers. ALL SALT programing is free of cost to its students. Alicia has successfully leveraged her extensive network in the industry, to secure cameras, computers, printers and all kinds of necessary equipment, access to other talented photography and technical teachers, individualized college guidance, ACT test preparation, guidance counselors, internship and freelance opportunities, and career and editorial publication introductions.
The Beacon grant will fund on-line summer classes during the pandemic, to support three teachers for four months.
PLOT - Preparing Leaders of Tomorrow
PLOT is fledgling organization to support mentors for youths in the juvenile justice system in Brownsville and Mott Haven. Mentors must commit to a minimum of 1 year. Parents are integral to the mentor/mentee process as often the mentees are young, and parents need to actively support the relationship
The program borrows space for activities as needed. Their main expenses are for 2 dedicated part time staff, their database, insurance, and background checks for potential new mentors. The Beacon grant will support generating operating costs for this start-up.
PROJECT IMPACT
Project Impact (PI) supports "justice-impacted" youth who are reentering school ("justice impacted" due to either their own or a family member's involvement with the justice system). The goal of the program is to support the academic success of such challenged students by providing mentoring, connections to services (as Pl students are often homeless or in transitional housing, food insecure, and live below the poverty line), and other support. Pl is based at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), a 26,000-student associate degree college, which has 1,500 justice-impacted students.
Pl originally requested a $10,000 grant to pay for student MetroCards and on-campus meal vouchers. However, the COVID crisis has created an urgent need to support students with direct assistance for rent, food and essentials until campus reopens. The revised request, approved by Beacon, will support such emergency funding.
READ 718
READ 718 is a Brooklyn community-based organization providing one-to-one literacy instruction to low-income students in grades 3-8 who have fallen behind in reading. Their mission is to close the literacy gap and to help ensure educational access and equity for all Brooklyn children. Their immediate goal is for all of their participants to be reading at or above grade level and their ultimate goal is to make a substantial impact on their participants' lifelong education and life outcomes by strengthening their fundamental reading skills. Their program has three 10-week sessions.
On average, over 80% of their participants move up at least one reading level per 10-week cycle. As a whole, students improve an average of 1.3 reading levels per 10-week cycle. Since READ 718 began in January 2015, it has provided over 10,000 hours of one-to-one literacy tutoring to over 300 children and trained over 250 community volunteers. Last fall they opened a second location in Brooklyn's Bed-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Because 25-30% of their students have learning disabilities, they are working on launching a Dyslexia program this summer which would require hiring a specialist along with another part time staff member to help with processing student packets and applications. The Beacon grant would be used for general operating support.