The Clinton School’s Center on Community Philanthropy has received a $225,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for a project to promote racial healing and equity in the American South.
The grant is one of 119 awarded by the foundation as part of a five-year, $75 million initiative to support racial equity and healing in communities across the country. The unprecedented effort, titled America Healing: A Racial Equity Initiative of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, aims to improve life outcomes for vulnerable children and their families by promoting racial healing and eliminating barriers to opportunities.
“We are excited to be a part of this initiative and thank the Kellogg Foundation for its support and leadership in promoting racial healing,” said Charlotte Lewellen Williams, assistant professor and director of the Center on Community Philanthropy. “As an institution dedicated to social change, the Clinton School is an ideal partner to help study these issues.”
The grant will support a three-year Clinton School project titled, “Pathways to Racial Healing and Equity in the American South: A Community Philanthropy Strategy,” which will engage researchers and practitioners to explore structural racism impacting children’s education and health, and mobilize community philanthropy leaders in healing racial divisions to improve lives.
The Center on Community Philanthropy will host explicit dialogs on the significance of race and diversity in setting achievable priorities for the American South. The Center’s “scholar-in-residence” program will invite scholars to study structural racism within the community and institutions in all sectors. These activities will help the government, business and the nonprofit sectors understand the nature of racial problems, learn what maintains those problems and where the system needs repair.
“We believe this will help leaders understand that community wealth-building through community philanthropy cannot be done without using racial and class lenses,” Williams said.
The project will culminate with a commemoration of the 15th anniversary of President Clinton’s 1997 speech at the University of California in San Diego that launched his national initiative on race, “One America in the 21st Century.”
Children of color are over-represented among the 29 million low-income children and families in America, particularly among families living in concentrated poverty. According to data from the National Center for Children in Poverty, about 61 percent of African-American, 62 percent of Latino, 57 percent of Native-American, 30 percent of Asian-American and 26 percent of white children live in low-income families. Additionally, 58 percent of children with immigrant parents live in poverty.
The goal of the America Healing initiative is to help make that vision a reality by engaging communities and supporting them in the hard work of racial healing and addressing the effects of historic and contemporary structural issues, such as residential segregation and concentrated poverty.
During the first phase of America Healing, 119 organizations will receive grants totaling $14,613,709 specifically to support community-based organizations’ healing efforts among racial and ethnic groups that address historic burdens, disparities and barriers to opportunity. Their efforts will focus within local communities to increase opportunities for children in education, health and economic areas. Grantees represent 29 states and the District of Columbia and all racial and ethnic population groups. To highlight the desire of communities to work together on racial healing, the foundation created a signature video, capturing the spirit of the initiative. The video can be viewed at www.americahealing.org.
Moreover, the America Healing initiative complements the racial equity approach in all of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant-making directed at supporting vulnerable children, their families and communities. The new initiative will continue to focus on issues at the core of structural racism and will align with the foundation’s program areas: Education and Learning; Food, Health and Well-being; and Family Economic Security.
To learn more about America Healing, please visit www.americahealing.org.
About the Center on Community Philanthropy
The Center on Community Philanthropy at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service has a vision to expand the knowledge, tools and practice of community-spawned and community-driven philanthropy. The center focuses its teaching, research and policy-making exclusively on the emerging field of sharing and giving in a community context.
About the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Established in 1930, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (www.wkkf.org) supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society. Grants are concentrated in the United States, southern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. The foundation is based in Battle Creek, Mich.