2020 Grant Recipients
InterConnection’s Computer Grant Program awards computers to under-resourced nonprofit organizations on a quarterly basis. This year, we received a record 672 applications and are distributing 40 computers to 5 amazing organizations across the country!
The grant committee reviewed each application carefully and based their decisions on the following criteria:
30% – Impact and Reach
25% – Technological Capacity of the Grantee
30% – Ability to Execute, Financial Capacity, and Plan for Sustainability
15% – Organizational Need
We would like to congratulate the following organizations on being chosen as our 2020 Grant Recipients:
Charlotte Bilingual Preschool Charlotte, North Carolina
The mission of Charlotte Bilingual Preschool (CltBP) is to prepare Spanish-speaking children for success in school and life by providing superior dual language, multi-cultural early childhood education (ECE). To build an equitable path to success for Latinx children, CltBP engages Latinx families early with high quality ECE programs designed to meet the unique needs of Spanish-speaking children from economically-marginalized families. Their comprehensive programs employ a two-generation approach and include bilingual wraparound services including occupational therapy, speech therapy, and family counseling to ensure a lasting impact on student success. CLtBP currently serves over 400 individuals each year.
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, CltBP moved all programming to remote delivery. With this grant, they estimate they will be able to serve an additional 50 Latinx families who are economically marginalized and disproportionally impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.
Illuminate S.T.E.M. Dallas, Texas
Illuminate S.T.E.M. provides learning opportunities that encourage, empower and equip students to innovate the technical future of tomorrow. They inspire and prepare students to compete and succeed in high paying careers related to Science, Engineering, Technology, and Math through career exploration, entrepreneurial endeavors and even global competition. Illuminate S.T.E.M. will use the awarded computers for Education Project Based Learning Camps & Workshops for robotics programming, website & application development, 3D printing, and other S.T.E.M. related activities & competitions.
Illuminate S.T.E.M. gives students a running start on their path toward a career in S.T.E.M. and they aim to see students through to the finish line. Each year, Illuminate S.T.E.M. equips more than 1,500 school students from under-represented communities to compete and succeed in S.T.E.M. fields at the college level and beyond.
Our Mother’s Home of Southwest Florida, Inc. Fort Meyers, Florida
The mission of Our Mother’s Home of Southwest Florida, Inc. is to end the repetitive cycle of foster care and generational poverty that afflicts teen mothers and their children by helping teen mothers who survived human trafficking and other traumas stay together with their children in a safe, nurturing, supportive transitional group home.
Through their Mentored Living Program, mother’s learn parenting techniques, are provided with safe child care, gain computer skills necessary for work and school, and receive anger management and healthy relationship education. With Mentored Living, young mothers gain the confidence and knowledge they need to take care of themselves and their children as productive members of society. Our Mothers Home of Southwest Florida served about 20 mothers and their children this year and will use the awarded computers for a computer lab for teen mothers.
Tilth Alliance Seattle, Washington
Tilth Alliance works in community with Washington farmers, gardeners and eaters with diverse backgrounds to build a sustainable, healthy and equitable food future. They use farms, gardens and kitchens as classrooms for hands-on education in agriculture, nutrition and science for people of all ages. Participants learn how to grow food on large or small scales, and to cook with nutritious, locally grown ingredients.
Tilth Alliance supports and partners with farmers across Washington State, including woman, POC, and/or immigrant owned farm businesses. Within Seattle, they have a strong presence in the Rainier Beach neighborhood where they focus their work on providing food and recreational opportunities to local under-served populations.
This grant will allow Tilth Alliance to update their outdated machines so they can focus more resources on direct service work including educational opportunities for farmers, summer employment for youth in Rainier Beach, and providing fresh produce to the families who need it. Together, passionate community members are creating a shift in our farming and consumption culture with the potential for great influence and change.
The Walls Project Baton Rouge, Louisiana
The Walls Project is a community reactivation organization stimulating Louisiana’s creative economy. Their mission is to build a vibrant creative economy, accessible for all. They create and paint murals in underinvested schools and neighborhoods, cultivate, educate, and inspire youth to attain the high demand jobs of the future. Through public art, workforce training, and blight remediation, they conquer the drivers of poverty while building culture and inclusion. They reactivate communities by remediating blight and making them safer.
Their Futures Fund Project has served over 1,500 participants thus far. The Futures Fund Project encourages unemployed and underemployed persons to “up-skill” for today’s technology-dense workplace by providing IT training, computer programming, and soft skills mentoring. The awarded computers will be loaned to participants who don’t have computer access at home so they can continue to practice what they’ve learned in class and access online lessons.
The VERA Project Seattle, Washington
The VERA Project is an all-ages, volunteer-driven, music and arts center dedicated to fostering a participatory creative culture for young people and beyond. VERA provides countless young people with world class concerts, gallery showings, and creative workforce development classes. All shows, classes, and sessions are all-ages, affordable, substance-free, youth-led, and staffed by community members trained in the space. VERA also offers scholarships to lower income youth, and never turns a single person away from a show or class due to lack of funds.
Each year, VERA provides over one hundred open sessions (free time for community members to work on projects) in their screen-printing and recording studios, as well as leadership training through programmatic and steering committees. The awarded computers will be used for VERA’s youth driven video and audio programs. They will lend some of the laptops to low income youth needing computer access for participation in their online classes.
Do you know of a nonprofit organization in need of technology?
Interested 501c3 nonprofit organizations who feel they embody what we are looking for are encouraged to apply.