At its summer 2012 board meeting (which was held on July 17th, 2012), the board made its end-of-year grants (for their fiscal year ending July 31st). Here’s a listing of these grants:
1) New Mexico Guardianship Project – $25,000
DESCRIPTION – The NM Guardianship Project helps caregivers get guardianship or adoption for children, ensuring a safe and stable home with the person who is providing care, nurturing and protection. Parents are deceased or suffer from substance abuse, incarceration and health issues. Project families are provided a social worker that visits the home—safety is evaluated and services for the family reviewed providing the tools for the child’s healthy development. The Project serves families statewide. Overhead is kept low maximizing externs from UNM Law School, NMSU Social of Work and CNM; electronic file storage; telephone, mail and internet communication with remote clients; and, telephonic appearances in distant judicial districts. Funding will be used for guardianship and adoption and to reach rural New Mexico. The Project strives to ensure that children living without parents have the emotional and financial stability that is necessary for them to become healthy members of the community.
2) A Home Within – $10,000
DESCRIPTION – We are seeking funding to establish a new chapter [of A Home Within] in New Mexico. Thanks to a referral from the FHL Foundation we made contact with the Heart Gallery of New Mexico Foundation and subsequently a contact at Children Youth and Families Department [CYFD]. Both of these organizations will assist us with locating a potential Clinical Director, connecting with referral bodies, and establishing an appropriate strategy for New Mexico. From experience, our chapters grow through three distinct stages: seed, emerging and established. The seed year sees the Clinical Director organizing a network of volunteer therapists, and connecting with referral bodies. As a result we expect any seed chapter to serve 2-10 children in the first year. By far the majority of chapters reach the emerging stage in year two and are well placed to serve 8-20 children. The final stage may take another one, two, or three years to reach. Established chapters have the long-standing relationships necessary to serve 20-60 children at any one time. Funding will support the Clinical Director’s participation in the three-year Professional Fellowship in the Treatment of Foster Youth, the recruitment of volunteer therapists, youth/child transportation and any local marketing materials that may be necessary.
3) Atrisco Heritage Foundation – $9,800
DESCRIPTION – The AfterMath Camp program is designed to reverse students’ declining interest and proficiency in mathematics, and build a foundation for STEM expertise in students. The program is sustainable and scalable, and measured for effective performance and continuous improvement. We promote professional development, community engagement and quality business ethics in young New Mexicans.
AfterMath Camp is a four-day educational camp designed to help New Mexico Hispanic and American Indian youth, along with other underrepresented and low income students, connect mathematics with interesting and challenging careers, thus helping to create tomorrow’s workforce. We expect to actively influence said disadvantaged youth toward educational attainment and career fulfillment, by cultivating in them a foundation for STEM expertise. We motivate and prepare them to consider technology careers, by building their confidence and interest in mathematics and its applications.
4) Lakota Language Consortium – $5,000
DESCRIPTION – The vision of LLC is to provide every Lakota child with the means to become a speaker of the Lakota first language, and to ensure that Lakota is spoken in every household on the reservation. In partnership with reservation school authorities LLC has developed a systemic, sequential and common language instruction curriculum. Our goals for this grant are as follows:
1. Complete development and publish the Level-5 textbook and teacher guides, CDs and DVD’s in 2012.
2. Begin to attach audio files to the New Lakota Dictionary online.
3. Host 2012 Lakota Summer Institute introducing an original Lakota play for classroom and community engagement use.
A nation of people is under threat. Much of their lands have been lost, they have been exiled, faced with generations of discrimination and assimilation. Their language, culture, ceremonies and spiritual beliefs have been assailed, prohibited and ridiculed. The attachment to their ancestors, customs, and heritages has been severed. The Lakota language is one of the few Native American languages with a chance of survival, with over 120,000 potential speakers; a population that US Census data says is growing faster than the nation as a whole. Elder speakers of Lakota continued to die off, and the language faces a serious decline towards extinction. At the same time, virtually none of the children entering schools speak the Lakota language. With completion of the Level-5 text about 5000 Lakota school children will be proficient in the language and will be able to engage in a meaningful conversation with their grandparents or other Tribal Elders in Lakota.
5) Ronald McDonald House Charities of NM – $20,000
DESCRIPTION – The mission of RMHC-NM is to provide affordable family lodging, complimentary food, respite services, comfort and care close to their child in medical treatment in Albuquerque. We’re the first choice of hospital social workers referring pediatric families. Trauma of a serious illness can shake a child’s world, affecting parents, siblings, extended family, schools and ultimately communities. Many parents are here away from their jobs, and often lose them. Long-term illnesses also affect the health care industry and insurance rates. Families of RMHC-NM’s programs often start out with the stress of their child’s medical conditions. Add to that: worries over medical decisions; costs of prolonged medical treatment and being away from home support systems. They are thrust into an unfamiliar world of unknowns, often without sufficient resources and coping skills. A Surgeon General’s Survey shows, children of stressed parents are three times as likely to suffer from depression and, there’s an 85% divorce rate for parents with special-needs children. Findings on attachment theory all confirm the need for safety, security and comfort as the cornerstone for development and mental health. RMHC-NM’s programs work to address the need for the families proximity to the child in treatment. The long-term goal is to get families home without collateral damage.
6) Taos Children’s Theatre – $5,200
DESCRIPTION – Ongoing since 1988, Taos Children’s Theatre (TCT) has endeavored to enhance the cultural & artistic life of their community and to promote arts in education. It continues to be TCT’s vision to provide educational theatre/dance programming for the schools, civic organizations and community. TCT has offered young actors opportunities to immerse themselves in the theatre process by presenting well-mounted theatrical productions available to the schools and community. TCT has involved fourteen private & public schools, summer camps & programs in theatrical projects with multi-generational casts, featuring adult professionals and student actors (ages 7-17). Final performances are videoed and aired on local cable television. TCT offers in-class theatre projects and lecture-demos on theatre process during the school year. Over the past 23 years, TCT has served 33,000 audience members plus 1400 student actors & dancers. A number of TCT students have gone on to graduate from NYU, UCLA & others.
7) Vero Beach Museum Lecture Series – $15,000
DESCRIPTION – Now looking forward to its 22nd year, the Distinguished Professor Series provides colleges and universities a unique opportunity to connect with their local Florida alumni associations and chapters. A school proposes and engages a speaker from their campus with an interesting and engaging topic in the arts or humanities to offer to area alumni, supporters, and Museum members. The Museum offers a refined cultural venue for schools to reconnect with their alumni, and alumni with their alma maters. The Museum partners with a limited number of institutions to offer this elite series of scholarly presentations each winter.
For 2013, schools expected to participate include University of Virginia, Smith College, Skidmore College, Sweet Briar College, and Williams College. With these relationships, the Museum seeks to realize its central programmatic goal of providing a venue for diverse arts and humanities scholarship for our community.
8) Conference on Southwest Foundations Annual Meeting (2012) – $10,000
DESCRIPTION – Opening Plenary Speaker: Dr. James Johnson, Jr. of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will discuss “disruptive demographics,” the graying and browning of America, and how they intersect in critical ways. At the same time he will debunk common assumptions drawn from demographics revealed in the 2010 census with more than a small bit of humor.
Friday Plenary Speaker: Suzi Sosa of the Dell Social Innovation Challenge, and Associate Director, RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community, The University of Texas at Austin, will talk about social innovation— what it really means, and how it can help address seemingly intractable social problems.
9) Animal Humane New Mexico (Donor-subsidized Veterinary Clinic) – $10,000
DESCRIPTION – Animal Humane’s Donor-subsidized Veterinary Clinic, located on our Main Campus at 615 Virginia St SE, plays a crucial role in ensuring pets stay healthy and with their families. As New Mexico’s first low-cost Veterinary Clinic for qualifying low-income pet owners, we provide much needed care for those who cannot afford to take their pets to private practices.
Here’s a listing of the grants made in fiscal year 2011–2012:
- Namaste Children’s Services (Investigate Bowlbian attachment) – $5,000
- University of Minnesota (S. Am. Attachment Conference) – $10,000
- Association of Small Foundations (Start ASF blog) – $15,000
- Bienvenidos Outreach (Free Meals Program) – $5,000
- Animals & Society Institute (AniCare Training Manual) – $5,000
- Cottonwood Gulch Foundation (Ex. Ed. Collaborative) – $1,000
- Bridges Project for Education (College Preparation) – $25,000
- Children’s Grief Center of NM (Group Therapy Sessions) – $5,500
- Salt Lake Children’s Center (Attachment Conference) – $2,500
- Nicholas Carr RYOL Lecture (Direct Charitable Activities) – $23,000
- Portales MainStreet Project (Yam Theater Renovations) – $8,000
- A Room of Her Own (General Operations) – $5,000
- Barrett Foundation (Services Coordinator) – $25,000
- Northern NM Birth Center (Rooting Program) – $15,000
- Syracuse University (Dr. Kenneth Corvo–lead researcher; DV Study) – $10,000
- Young Fathers of Santa Fe (General Operations) – $15,000
- The Taft School (Service Programs) – $25,000
- Advocacy Inc. (NM Guardianship Project) – $25,000
- A Home Within (Start local chapter) – $10,000
- Atrisco Heritage Foundation (AfterMath Camps) – $9,800
- Lakota Language Consortium (Training materials) – $5,000
- Ronald McDonald House Charities-NM (Lodging program) – $20,000
- Taos Children’s Theatre – (Summer programs) – $5,200
- Vero Beach Art Museum (Lecture Series) – $15,000
- Conference on Southwest Foundations (Annual Conference) – $10,000
- Animal Humane New Mexico (Veterinary Clinic) – $10,000
Overall 2011–2012 FHL Foundation grant program snapshot:
- (26) grants made
- $310,000 in grants or direct charitable activities
- average grant size = $11,900
- 13.1% – Attachment research, education, or clinical application
- 19.5% – Conferences and lectures
- 10.6% – Capacity building
- 42.0% – Direct services
- 14.8% – Education (non-attachment)
Congratulations to all of our 2011–2012 grant recipients!
As always, if you have any questions concerning any of the above grants, please feel free to contact our office using the Contact Us link shown above (or hit “reply” if you read by email). Note: we will begin our 2012–2013 grant program at our annual board meeting in late September, early October, 2012. Have a great rest of the summer!
