Thank you all for attending our first in-person event for 2022 last week: Impact at Work! And what a special evening it was. Click here to see some highlights.
Together with our grant recipients, we are “Making a Difference”! Here’s a recap of our last 3 non-profit grant recipients, totaling $234,000!
We heard from our recent grant recipient organizations:
• Covenant House of California,
• Aspire Education and
• Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center.
Wow – each report-out was so inspiring as to the progress they have made! Here’s the recap for each one:
Covenant House
They received $109,000 in the Fall of 2020 and Amanda Sattler, Chief Development and Communications Officer, shared the final report of their transformational program.
Program Overview: Covenant House has youth where 50% are former foster youth, 25% are survivors of human trafficking and 70% experience homelessness who have been victims of violent crimes, so they developed a program to implement an on-site mental health program for youth facing homelessness at their Oakland facility.
Program Impact: 291 youth received mental health services in 2 years!
This was accomplished by hiring clinicians in Oakland, providing training and support to the frontline staff, offering all residents 1:1 therapy and group therapy and development of better partnership practices with other agencies to ensure additional support was available.
There were many touching stories of how this helped saved lives through this program.
Aspire Education
They received $100,000 in the Fall of 2021 and Drew Sokol, Executive Director, shared the interim report on their transformational program: Community Reading Buddies.
Program Overview:
Aspire invites former students to be trained in leadership and communication skills with the goal of mentoring younger students in literacy through Community Reading Buddies (CRB). Our program has two main goals:
1. Shrink the literacy gap for Bay Area Elementary students.
2. Increase young people’s confidence, communication skills, and connection to community.
How we do this: Youth Mentors meet with their Buddies twice a week to work on early literacy foundations and support them in developing a genuine love of learning.
Program Impact:
The community issues are that 2/3 of the Bay Area’s low income kindergarteners arrive at school already behind, with 245,000 K-3rd graders a full grade level behind in literacy after Covid.
The grant enables this program to grow to triple the number of students served in this unique program from 400 (200 mentors and 200 young readers) to 1200. For 2022 year to date, in only 8 weeks, the young readers made-up 4 months of literacy progress!
Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center
They received our first $25,000 Community Grant in Fall 2021. Bret Sweet, East Bay Program Director, shared their year to date progress.
Program Overview:
They will use its grant to expand support of existing and new business owners seeking to improve the use of technology (on-line websites, payment technology, etc.). Their clients are 89% lower income, 78% women and 78% people of color who run their own businesses.
This grant has assisted will these businesses to expand and rebuild their operations during and post COVID in Richmond (serving Contra Costa and Alameda Counties).
Program Impact:
The organization has already onboarded 15 of the 25 targeted business owners to educate the owners on using technology to improve their revenue, effectively share best practices and grow their grant funding to distribute resources to these businesses.
And the Impact Continues!
Each grant recipient expressed their sincere appreciation on receiving this grant. All 3 organizations highlighted how our Impact100 East Bay grant validated them as an organization and each one has received additional funding to ensure their program’s’ sustainability and community impacts for years to come! What an amazing testament to what we can all achieve together. We are truly making an impact!
Take a moment to celebrate our evening together by viewing pictures, liking us on Facebook, and sharing this event and opportunity with those you care about.
With much gratitude and appreciation,
Impact100 East Bay