Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation provides $120,000 for “Healthy Youth, Healthy Community” racial equity grants program

(WELLESLEY, Mass.) March 4, 2021 – The Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation announced today it will award $120,000 through its “Healthy Youth, Healthy Community” racial equity grants program. Six organizations supporting and working with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) youth in Connecticut, Mass., Maine, and New Hampshire will each receive $20,000. These grants will help BIPOC youth improve the overall health and racial equity of their community.

“In response to the racial violence incidents across the country this past year, our Foundation team created this grants initiative to learn about the strength and resilience of local organizations led by people of color that engage BIPOC youth in ways that build their confidence, skills and understanding of the world,” said Karen Voci, president of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation. “Through this grants program, our goal is to listen, learn and engage BIPOC youth leaders as they envision their own community’s needs. This includes supporting creative ways to make their communities healthier – from creating a multicultural education campaign in their schools to revitalizing urban neighborhoods to leading advocacy efforts around access to healthy food.”

The recipients of the “Healthy Youth, Healthy Community” grants are as follows:

• Asian Community Development Corporation (Boston, Mass.) – Strengthen Asian Voices of Organized Youth for Community Empowerment (A-VOYCE) efforts to enable youth to be equity-centered urban designers in Boston and Malden.
• Granite State Organizing Project (Manchester, N.H.) – Expand youth program efforts to envision and implement a multicultural educational equity campaign in the Manchester public school system.
• Groundwork Bridgeport (Bridgeport, Conn.) – Enhance capacity of the youth service-learning program focused on revitalizing urban neighborhoods in Bridgeport.
• La Colaborativa (Chelsea, Mass.) – Enhance Latinx immigrant youth community organizers’ campaign to increase equity and justice in housing in Chelsea.
• New England Arab American Organization (Portland, Maine) – Expand youth leadership program efforts to create social change and end discrimination of Immigrant youth from the Middle East and Northern Africa in Maine.
• Springfield Food Policy Council (Springfield, Mass.) – Enhance capacity for youth leaders to identify and lead advocacy and public policy campaigns around food access, youth employment and neighborhood development in Springfield and Holyoke.

“This program is particularly important now as so many BIPOC communities here in New England have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Voci. “Our Foundation is committed to addressing racial and social inequities and health disparities across the region and we look forward to the creative solutions these young leaders will share.”

A total of 118 organizations applied for these grants.

About the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation
Created in 1980, The Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation (the “Foundation”) supports Harvard Pilgrim Health Care’s mission to improve the quality and value of health care for the people and communities we serve. The Foundation provides the tools, training and leadership to help build healthy communities throughout Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. In 2020, the Foundation awarded more than $10.4 million in grants to nearly 800 nonprofit organizations in the region. Since its inception in 1980, the Foundation has awarded more than $165 million in funds and resources throughout the four states. For more information, please visit www.harvardpilgrim.org/foundation.