CFM Announces 2023 Community Impact Grant Recipients

The Community Foundation for Mississippi announces twenty grant recipients through its Community Impact Grants to support projects aligned with CFM’s focus areas: children and families, community partnerships and placemaking. This grant program supports project grants up to $5,000 for organizations within CFM’s 22 county service area. All Community Impact Grants are supported through its donor-supported Community Trust Fund.

Community Impact Grant Awards will support the work of grantees working in the following areas:

Children and Families

• Southwest Mississippi Multiplex for Early Innovative Intervention Studies to support “Jackie’s Readers,” a monthly literary circle for McComb teens to inspire leadership and youth reading skills.
• Jackson Medical Mall Foundation to support the “Young Futurists Project,” an intergenerational effort to create a youth innovation hub that simultaneously celebrates and centers youth as creators while also providing opportunities and resources to support parent engagement and keeping families connected.
• Hope Hollow Ministries to launch a cooking club where children with disabilities can gather with their peers to use their creativity and learn the joy of cooking.
• Jackson Public Schools to support “Checkmate Champions,” a project to re-establish chess clubs at each of Jackson Public Schools’ seven high schools.
• KMARTIN GROUP to support “Carolyn’s Clubhouse: a Healthy Early Literacy Learning Project” that will work to build early literacy skills, foster a love for reading and promote positive social-emotional development and early learning for students in K-3rd grade.
• Stewpot Community Services to support “Tending to Teen Health,” a project to provide mindfulness-based expertise practice and therapeutic counseling opportunities to teens in Stewpot’s after-school program to build skills that promote physical and mental health.
• The Mississippi Chapter of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association to support “More Mississippi Kids on Bikes Try It Out Program,” an effort to use mountain biking as a tool to connect 6th-12th grade to healthy physical outdoor activities, building confidence and fostering teamwork.
• Ferst Readers of Lincoln County, MS to support their “Book Buddies” program, where they will partner with Lincoln County Head Start to provide books that support kindergarten readiness to all students and classroom monthly over the period of 12 months.
• The Mississippi Center for Police & Sheriffs to support building accessibility ramps for four families suffering from medical, disability and mobility issues.

Community Partnerships

• Art For All Mississippi to support its “Arts Inclusion for Veterans and Senior Citizens,” a six-month arts workshop in partnership with the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary, (Post 9832), at the Arts Center of Mississippi.
• Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life to support the “Literacy Achievement Bonanza,” a week-long program full of literacy-based activities designed to foster a positive relationship with reading while improving literacy skills in age, skill, and developmentally-appropriate methods aligned with the College and Career Readiness Standards.
• New Stage Theatre to support its efforts to introduce live theatre and art-in-education to hundreds of students throughout the 2023-2024 school year.
• Greater Bethlehem Temple to support for its Community Fair to provide social, medical, mental, and legal services to the general population, while also celebrating children with a carnival and free refreshments for all.
• Mississippi Early Learning Alliance to support the “Leading From Strength: A Leadership Cohort for Childcare Directors of Color,” a project to support a nine-month empowerment network cohort that will provide learning experiences to promote the professional advancement of women of color working in early care and education.

Placemaking

• Church Triumphant Global to support the “Jackson Community Concrete Farmers Market,” a project that will utilize abandoned lots to provide city residents with access to free, nutritious foods and to access to education to encourage healthy lifestyles.
• Operation Shoestring to support “History for the Holidays: Activating Oral History in Central Jackson,” a project that will build upon the organization’s ongoing oral history training program for central Jackson community members and support recording micro-oral histories by participants.
• The Mississippi Humanities Council to support “Nuestro Mississippi”, an ongoing partnership with the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity to document central Mississippi’s Latino community through photography and oral history.
• Riverside Collective Holdings to support “Transforming Communities with Art: Empowering Students as Creative Entrepreneurs,” a project that places community members, local non-profits, grade school students and young creatives in dialogue to collectively reimagine public space resulting in the design of participatory murals.
• Pike School of Art to support “LOCKED / LABELED: Stories of Juvenile Incarceration,” a project that brings to light the untold stories of Pike County’s juvenile detention system by allowing individuals who, as children, were once confined within its walls, to revisit the spaces that once defined their lives and share their stories through film and photography.
• Center for Social Entrepreneurship to support “Hope Rising: Community Transformation through Public Art” an effort to use community public art to ignite a sense of hope, foster renewed pride and inspire transformation in an underserved community in Jackson.

“The Community Impact Grant is the anchor of our Community Trust Fund competitive grant opportunities, which allow grantees across our 22-county service area to gain support for innovative projects across our focus areas,” said Melody Moody-Thortis, Director of Strategic Impact. “These grantees represent a wide swath of projects that support placemaking, children and families and community partnerships. We are eager to see and celebrate their successes. As a funder committed to the communities we serve, CFM is also offering every applicant to our competitive grant programs, regardless of CFM funding, access to grant writing technical assistance and, whenever possible, connections to like-minded donors as part of our core commitment to the long-term sustainability of nonprofits.”