Recent Grant Recipients
New Harvest Foundation recently announced the recipients of grant awards for the Spring 2011 grant cycle. While our focus continues to be LGBT youth and seniors, we are pleased to support a wide variety of initiatives in this cycle. Our grant recipients include:
The Monona Library
The Monona Public Library – Wisconsin’s 2010 Library of the Year – has received funding from New Harvest Foundation to establish a multimedia, young adult/teen LGBTQ collection. This special collection will include both fiction and nonfiction resources and will feature fiction, biographies, graphic novels, poetry, health and wellness multimedia materials, as well as CDs, DVDs, and overdrive resources. The Monona Library has established a regional reputation for consumer health issues, so securing a vital and healthy core LGTBQ collection for tweens and teens is urgently needed. Considering that this collection will be available across 7 counties among 52 Link system libraries, the potential impact and benefit of this initiative is far reaching! Click here to learn more about the Monona Library and its initiatives.
Youth Against Drugs and Alcohol (YADAA), Fall River School District
Grant funds will support “Operation Acceptance”, specifically helping to bring Jamie Nabozny in to speak to students in this small town about his experience of growing up in a small Wisconsin town and being bullied as an LGBT youth. Currently, emotional support for students that identify with the LGTBQ community does not exist and students feel misunderstood and alienated. YADAA hope to give these students self-confidence to be themselves while also educating the school community to appreciate other life choices and cultures. This is the beginning of what the Fall River School District hopes will be an ongoing effort to develop a supportive and accepting community for all students.
UW-Madison Oral History Program
Grant funds will be used to create a more robust online presence for “Madison’s LGBT Community, 1960’s-Present” Oral History Project. This will increase the visibility and accessibility of this project. The more robust web presence will serve the dual purpose of (1) making what has been collected more accessible and (2) helping establish the vitality of a project worthy of support.
OutReach, Inc.
Grant funds will support the “Interfaith Dialogues on Sexuality”, an event aimed at strengthening relations between the LGBT and religious communities. The UW-Madison School of Social Work is co-hosting this conference with OutReach LGBT Center that will take place January 22, 2012, from 1 to 5 pm at the UW Pyle Center. The conference focuses on how religious traditions and organizations in the Madison area have transformed their congregations into open and affirming spaces for the LGBT community. A number of Madison-area congregations will be presenting their views, strategies, and barriers in transforming congregations. Keynote speaker Rev. Scott Anderson will share reflections on becoming the first openly gay man ordained in the Presbyterian Church. More information about the conference can be found here. To register to attend ($10 registration fee), visit the OutReach website.
Wisconsin Books to Prisoners
New Harvest Foundation continues to financially support this worthy project. This is a project of the Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative that supports the educational and reading interests of the traditionally marginalized, often maltreated LGBT minority, in hopes of improving their condition while in prison. Click here to learn more about this project.
Fair Wisconsin
Grant funds will support the first annual Fair Wisconsin Leadership Conference, a statewide leadership initiative for LGBT and allied activists, elected officials and community leaders. “Connecting Leaders, Advancing the Movement” will be hosted at the Hilton in downtown Milwaukee. This project is a new and innovative approach to building a strong, well-connected community of LGBT and allied leaders who feel empowered to advance the movement for equality in Wisconsin. Chaz Bono — national transgender activist, 2011 Dancing with the Stars contestant, and son of Cher and Sonny Bono — will deliver the keynote address at the Saturday evening gala dinner! To learn more about the Leadership Conference, please visit the Fair Wisconsin website.
Funding the Needs of the Youth & Elderly
This past year, the New Harvest Foundation Board of Directors decided to make funding initiatives that specifically address the needs of youth and elderly members of the LGBTQ community our priority. We felt that these segments of the population are often under-served. During the 2010 Fall grant cycle, we funded four initiatives that focused on these priorities. These initiatives included:
TAPIT/new works Ensemble Theater’s “Bullying: The Musical”
Bullying: The Musical was a two-part project. The first part involved conducting “stop bullying” workshops with 1,500 students from elementary and middle schools in Madison and Sun Prairie. The words and stories of these 1,500 students were then utilized to develop the play Bullying: The Musical, featuring eight young people, ranging in ages from 14-20. School audiences that attended the play were huge – nearly 1,500. The evening performance for the general population also was well-attended. The strength of this project is its timely and timeless message for people of any age. “Once you decide to help the bully inside you, you’ve got a direction. You can make new connections. You don’t have to doubt there is a way out and through – straight to the real you.” (lyric by Danielle Dresden). TAPIT/new works plans to produce a video of the production for distribution. They also plan to market their workshops and provide additional performances of the play to interested groups. For more information about Bullying: The Musical, click here.
GSAFE’s Make It Known
This initiative focuses on raising awareness and knowledge of laws and policies, both federal and state, that protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender public school students and that promote inclusive and comprehensive sex education. This includes educating youth, parents and school professionals, and is part of the on-going effort to curb anti-gay bullying in schools and prevent high risk behavior among sexual minority youth.
UW Foundation, in partnership with the UW LGBT Center, Break the Silence Wisconsin
The UW Foundation, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin’s LGBT Campus Center, organized an event that sought to end bullying, stop the silence, and address the need for LGBTQ equality now. Although Mother Nature didn’t prove to be an ally on April 15th, over 600 people came out to take a stand against bullying, harassment, homophobia and transphobia in our schools and community. “Break the Silence”, Wisconsin was a huge success and to see so many people gathering in the freezing rain and whipping winds was a clear indicator that there is a commitment in the state of Wisconsin to stop the silence that perpetuates violence and hatred. “Break the Silence” brought students together from across the state, not only for the day, but as part of a larger movement to address safety and climate issues in our schools. Click here to view video clips and press coverage of this event.
OutReach’s LGBT Senior-Specific Sensitivity Training for Health Care
This proposal is to fund four quarterly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender senior-specific sensitivity training conferences during 2011. These conferences, for health care professionals in South Central Wisconsin who work with LGBT older adults in aging services (such as housing, medical and social services), will raise awareness and address the need for LGBT friendly and culturally competent care.
