Focus 2020 CAG Awardees with Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and Tim Nation

Photo of last year’s Focus 2020 CAG Awardees with Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and Tim Nation

FOCUS 2020 COMMUNITY ACTION GRANTS
 

We are very excited to announce our 2014 Focus 2020 Community Action Grant recipients! We recently awarded $24,954 in grants to 8 local community activists to support projects designed to create a more welcoming and engaged greater Indianapolis community.

2014 Focus 2020 Community Action Grant Awardees:

– David Durica: #bereconciled – $5,000 grant

Dialogue will be facilitated within diverse groups, featuring a storytelling presentation teaching reconciliation. Participants will be invited to identify/photograph their “Claim to Change” to contribute to the art installation, a collage.

– Michelle Winkelman: Beyond Perceptions: Immigration – $3,805

Youth artists and foreign-born adults will be paired to exchange stories and thoughts on the topic of immigration and will create art based on that exchange. The project will culminate in an exhibit at the Indianapolis Art Center.

 – Stephanie Putt: Children’s International Folk Dance Festival – $900

Will provide scholarships to allow Indiana children to learn and perform international folk dances.

– Vanessa Gibbs: GGMBC Summer Youth Academy – $1,410 grant

In partnership with Indy Parks, will englighten, engage, instruct and transform youth on the aspect of how much bigger communal life is than we are as individuals.

 – Karen Harper: Indy Sun Circle Initiative – $2,700 grant

Will create a weekly circle experience with a group of local participants so each 1) feels the impact of their own authenticity, worthiness and wisdom, 2) discovers similar appreciation for others, and 3) build trust with others through mutual respect & accountability.

– Tuane Hearn: Inside Out: Beyond the 4th Wall – $4,250 grant

Producing a video that will communicate to at-risk youth the power of their own decision-making by connecting them to the stories of incarcerated youth sharing stories of what they wish they had done differently.

– Darren Chittick: Sharing Our Stories: Life at war and life at home after war – $1,889 grant

Will create a more welcoming home for future returning veterans by recording their stories of living through war to allow Hoosiers to better understand their experiences.

– Karlisha Russell: The Good Hustle Project – $5,000 grant

An urban youth entrepreneurship initiative. It is designed to help youth identify and explore their own natural gifts and teach them how to parlay these gifts into a successful and legal entrepreneurial endeavor.

Our goal in supporting these projects is to help our Focus 2020 graduates take the message of embracing diversity to all corners of our community, to immigrants and veterans, to the hungry, the scared, and the lonely, to the families of the disadvantaged.We believe that everyone, with just a little help, has it within themselves to help build a more welcoming and inclusive community.Focus 2020, PLC’s community education initiative, has been sponsored by Citizens Energy Group, the Indianapolis Foundation, a CICF affiliate, the Samerian Foundation, and the Efroymson Family Fund, a CICF affiliate

For additional information PLC’s community programs, please contact John McShane at jmcshane@peacelearningcenter.org or visit www.peacelearningcenter.org to learn more about how PLC can help you!