Announcing our Supporting Organizations Led By People of Color and Amplifying Youth Voice grant recipients
As movements to combat systemic racism and anti-Blackness progress throughout the country, we have a moral and civic responsibility to foster a public education system that enables all of our young people to succeed and our communities to thrive. We are proud to support work that advances racial equity in service of an excellent and equitable public education during such an important moment for our society and to introduce our grantee partners who are leading these efforts.
Earlier this year, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation launched a new organizational strategy to advance racial equity in public education as the central focus of our grantmaking. Today, we are excited to take another important step in this work through two new grant funds that support youth- and community-based organizations, centered in communities of color who have been historically and systematically left out of education decision-making.
To ensure that these organizations have the supports they need to continue their important work and strengthen their development, we are providing flexible, multi-year grants. We hope this contributes to the attainment of a shared vision of high-quality, equitable public education.
Our Supporting Organizations Led By People of Color grant fund will provide $100,000 annually for three years to organizations led by leaders of color who are working to transform barriers to racial equity in public education. Additionally, this fund will support these organizations in a co-designed leadership development program designed to meet their capacity building needs. These organizations are embedded in their communities and actively engage parents, youth, and educators to address issues such as dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline; promoting more culturally responsive teaching and learning; supporting immigrant students and English Language Learners; supporting students with special needs; and advocating for educator diversity.
Additionally, our Amplifying Youth Voice grant fund seeks to amplify the authentic voices of young people throughout New England, supporting their participation in decision-making that affects their futures. This grant fund will support youth organizing groups with three-year general operating support grants of $52,750 annually, as well as technical assistance focused on building their capacity, power, and voice. These brilliant and committed young people are experienced in leading campaigns such as implementing restorative justice practices in schools; promoting access to financial aid for youth who are undocumented; seeking funding for socio-emotional learning and access to mental health professionals and social workers in schools; dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline; developing ethnic studies curriculum; and advocating for inclusive policies for undocumented and LGBTQIA+ youth.
This is an early part of our strategic efforts to achieve our mission and vision as an organization and contribute to the regions’ future.
We look forward to learning from and working with these incredible organizations in the years ahead, in a collective effort to ensure our nation lives up to its promise of opportunity, equality, and justice for all.
You can learn more about both sets of grantees below.
Supporting Organizations Led By People of Color Grantees:
Make the Road CT (Bridgeport and Hartford, CT): Make the Road CT is a parent and youth organizing group focused on improving educational access and equity for public school students, empowering parents to advocate for their children within the school system, and providing training and planning resources to immigrant families with undocumented or mixed immigration status.
Step Up New London (New London, CT): Step Up is a parent organizing group focused on advocating for racial equity reforms in New London Public Schools. Step Up trains parents on community organizing and advocacy, supports parent-led efforts to advocate within the school system, and implements campaigns to push for reforms.
COMPASS Youth Collaborative (Hartford, CT): COMPASS works with schools, parents, educators, and community members to support disconnected youth, engaging them in relationships to provide supports and opportunities that help them become ready, willing, and able to succeed in education, employment, and life.
Educators for Excellence (E4E) (New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport, CT): E4E is a national organization with a Connecticut chapter serving teachers in New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport. E4E strives to ensure that teachers are included in education policy decisions. The organization identifies issues that impact schools, creates solutions to these challenges, and advocates for policies and programs that give all students access to a quality education.
The Chelsea Collaborative (Chelsea, East Boston, Everett, and Revere, MA): The Chelsea Collaborative empowers Chelsea residents to enhance the social and economic health of the community and its people while holding institutional decision-makers accountable.
Southeast Asian Coalition of Central MA (SEACMA) (Worcester, MA): SEACMA supports, promotes, and advocates for the success of the Southeast Asian population of Central Massachusetts in their pursuit of naturalization while also maintaining their own unique cultural identity. SEACMA provides youth and adult programing, educational advocacy, and parent engagement opportunities while advocating for language access and culturally relevant teaching and learning.
The Young People’s Project (YPP) (Cambridge, MA): YPP uses Math Literacy Work to develop the abilities of elementary through high school students to succeed in school and in life, and in doing so involves them in efforts to eliminate institutional obstacles to their success.
Teach Western MA (TWM) (Holyoke, Springfield, and Western Massachusetts): TWM is a partnership founded by Holyoke Public Schools and the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership, representing 30 schools and serving more than 11,000 students in Western Massachusetts. TWM works on teacher recruitment, preparation and retention with a hyper focus on diversifying the workforce to reflect the demographics of the children in Holyoke and Springfield public schools and six local charter public schools.
The Teachers’ Lounge (Greater Boston, MA): The Teachers’ Lounge seeks to drive unprecedented student outcomes by greatly diversifying the people, thoughts, and actions of the educational workforce in the Greater Boston Area and beyond.
Wôpanâak Language and Cultural Weetyoo, Inc. (Mashpee, MA): Wôpanâak Language and Cultural Weetyoo, Inc. works to restore Wôpanâôt8âôk (Wôpanâak language) as the principal means of expression among the Tribes of the Wampanoag Nation, and to return language home to Tribal families. Having worked for two decades to reclaim their Native American language from an extensive archival record after generations without fluent speakers, their teachers now instruct hundreds of students each year, including K-12 Wampanaog youth in Mashpee Public Schools on Cape Cod.
Women Encouraging Empowerment (WEE) (Revere, MA): WEE’s mission is to educate, advocate, protect, and advance the rights of immigrants, refugees, and low-income women and their families through organizing, leadership development, and service delivery.
Equity Institute (Providence, RI): Equity Institute serves educators of color in Providence and other Rhode Island communities, with a focus on educator diversity, the educator pipeline, and the retention of educators of color. It develops innovative systems that cultivate culturally responsive schools and communities for all learners through organizational development, research, and networking.
Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education (ARISE)(Providence, RI): ARISE mobilizes policy, programs, and partnerships to prepare, promote, and empower Rhode Island’s Southeast Asian students for educational and career success.
Parents Leading for Educational Equity (PLEE) (Providence, RI): PLEE is a parent-led, grassroots organization with a mission to fight for a parent voice in education decision-making, and for access to a high-quality public school option for all children of color.
Gedakina (Essex, VT): Gedakina is a multigenerational endeavor to strengthen and revitalize the cultural knowledge and identity of Native American youth and families from across New England, and to conserve traditional homelands and places of historical, ecological, and spiritual significance.
Amplifying Youth Voice Grantees
Citywide Youth Coalition (CWYC) (New Haven, CT): CWYC is a youth organizing group dedicated to improving access to equitable education for youth in New Haven. The organization builds youth power through education, leadership development, and anti-racist community organizing.
Blue Hills Civic Association (BHCA) (Hartford, CT): BHCA empowers the people living and working in the Blue Hills and surrounding communities to create stable and attractive neighborhoods through organizing, advocacy, and multi-generational programs.
Revere Youth in Action (RYiA) (Revere, MA): Revere Youth in Action (RYiA) builds youth power through organizing, direct education and working in coalitions for social change. It is one of the few organizations in Revere, Massachusetts that organizes for racial, immigrant and economic justice.
Student Immigrant Movement (SIM)(MA): SIM is a statewide immigrant youth-led organization whose mission is to build the power of immigrant students by identifying, recruiting, and developing leaders across Massachusetts and the United States to address the problems in their own communities.
Worcester Youth Civics Union (Latino Education Institute at Worcester State University, Worcester, MA): Worcester Youth Civics Union works to achieve student excellence by actively engaging on issues of racial and socio-economic inequality in their educational experiences.
Maine Inside Out (MIO) (Portland, ME): MIO is an organization focused on supporting incarcerated and system-impacted youth across Maine to build power, develop leadership, and create community change inside youth prisons and in communities directly impacted by mass incarceration.
The Root Social Justice Center, Youth 4 Change (Y4C) (Brattleboro, VT): Y4C provides education, outreach, and capacity building for youth organizers in Brattleboro, Vermont who are focused on promoting anti-racist community organizing.
Outright Vermont (VT): Outright Vermont’s mission is to build a Vermont where all LGBTQ+ youth have hope, equity, and power. They do this through programs that support self-discovery and peer connection, strengthening families with education and adult peer connections, and training, organizing, and networking to transform schools, communities, and systems.
Providence Student Union* (Providence, RI): Providence Student Union cultivates students to become powerful advocates for their own education and well-being, uniting youth from across Providence to take the lead in reshaping their schools and communities.
Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM)* (Providence, RI): PrYSM is a youth organization that challenges and supports Southeast Asian youth to become leaders, organizers, and critical thinkers, by offering educational workshops, leadership opportunities, mentorship, and oversight of youth-led community organizing projects.
Youth in Action* (Providence, RI): Founded in 1997 by a group of young people motivated to make change in their community, Youth in Action (YIA) is one of the pioneers of youth-led work in Providence. The organization creates opportunities for young people in Providence to become agents of change through transformative youth programming.
Portland Empowered* (Portland, ME): Located at USM’s Youth and Community Engagement team, Portland Empowered strives to ensure that historically underrepresented student and parent voices are reflected in policy and practice within Portland Public Schools.
Granite State Organizing Project’s Young Organizer United (Y.O.U.)* (Manchester and Nashua, NH): Young Organizer United (Y.O.U.) is a group of mostly immigrant and refugee students attending high school in Manchester. Y.O.U. believes that students’ voices are crucial in shaping and implementing policies that concern their education.
Hearing Youth Voices* (New London, CT): Hearing Youth Voices is a youth-led social justice organization working to create systemic change in the education system in New London, CT. The group believes that organizing is the most effective tool for youth to build power and successfully make change in their communities.
Connecticut Students for a Dream (C4D)* (CT): Founded in 2010 by undocumented young people, Connecticut Students for a Dream (C4D) empowers youth through community organizing, advocacy, and leadership development, as well as providing educational programming for undocumented youth. C4D is the only youth-led, statewide network in Connecticut that fights for the rights of undocumented youth and their families.
Elevated Thought* (Lawrence, MA): Elevated Thought exposes young people to the power of the arts as a tool for social change, helping them to harness their voices to transform their communities. As a community of predominantly Caribbean and Latinx immigrants, Lawrence youth face racial and economic injustices, and Elevated Thought allows Lawrence youth to leverage their creative skills to make positive transformations within their community.
Youth on Board* (YOB) (Boston, MA): Youth on Board (YOB) has been a leader in the field of youth organizing in the Boston area and beyond since 1994. Youth on Board is a youth-led, adult supported program where young people have the space and tools to recognize and utilize the power they hold to dismantle political and economic structures that reinforce inequity. Youth on Board co-administers the Boston Student Advisory Council (BSAC) in partnership with the Boston Public Schools. BSAC acts as the student union of the district, leading organizing efforts, forging relationships with district and city-leaders, impacting policy change, and transforming school culture across the board.
Pa’Lante Restorative Justice Program* (Holyoke, MA): Pa’Lante’s mission is to build youth power, center student voice, and organize for policies and practices that dismantle the school to prison pipeline in Holyoke and beyond. Pa’Lante youth leaders use restorative practices and youth organizing to resolve conflicts, reduce school suspensions, decrease violence, strengthen relationships, increase equity, and build community in Holyoke Public Schools.
Students for Educational Justice* (SEJ) (New Haven, CT): Students for Educational Justice (SEJ) is a youth-led, intergenerational organizing body that drives efforts for racial and educational justice in Connecticut. SEJ envisions a just education system and an equitable society in which all people understand the history of race in the United States, and are actively committed to dismantling systemic racism and other forms of oppression.
*Denotes a returning Amplifying Youth Voice grantee
