Kalamazoo Foundation receives $200,000 grant to fight racism

A national effort to promote racial healing, led by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, has enlisted the efforts of one of Kalamazoo's leading organizations.

The Kalamazoo Community Foundation has been awarded a $200,000 grant, one of 119 organizations to be funded in the Kellogg Foundation's new five-year, $75 million "America Healing" racial equity initiative. The effort is intended take on structural racism and expand opportunities for vulnerable children.

The national initiative will address the effects of such issues as residential segregation and concentrated poverty. Its aim is to improve the lives of vulnerable children and their families by eliminating barriers to opportunities.

Children of color are over-represented among the 29 million low-income children and families in the United States. About 61 percent of African American, 62 percent of Latino, 58 percent of children with immigrant parents live in low-income families, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.

In Kalamazoo, two nonprofit groups that works with young people, a group of young people and the Community Foundation itself will be looking at local practices and policies "to get to the meat of overcoming structural barriers," says Dr. Sharon Anderson.

The work undertaken by the Kalamazoo Community Foundation will go beyond conversation. "We think people want to do something more than just talk about it, but no one has asked them to do more," Anderson says. "Our objective is to find various examples of how structural change plays out. We will be learning as we go."

Participants will be asked to commit to a three-year process. They will evaluate programs being used elsewhere and learn how certain systems now in place locally discriminate against people of color. Projects and policies that reduce institutional racism are expected to emerge.

"When we are done," Anderson says, "we hope people will have a real sense of achievement."


Writer: Kathy Jennings
Source: Dr. Sharon Anderson, Kalamazoo Community Foundation