The first time I became aware of the concept of environmental justice, I was in Jamaica as a Peace Corps volunteer. A neighboring oil plant contaminated the water supply of the community I was staying at. People woke up to their tap water being brownish in color and having odd metallic taste. They felt nausea …
San Jose Taiko (SJT), a grantee of the Hewlett Foundation’s Performing Arts Program since 2004, is a professional performance company that has mesmerized audiences with the powerful and propulsive sounds of the taiko. Inspired by traditional Japanese drumming, SJT advances the art form of taiko by connecting people through cultural understanding, artistic expression and rhythmic …
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the milestone has offered a chance for us to reflect and learn from the past, so as to inform and inspire the future. For our staff and board, “looking back to look forward” has included articulating a set of guiding principles…
I’m about to meet a runaway success story. Yvonne is a 21-year-old college senior at UC Berkeley. She’s the first member of her family to ever graduate from high school and attend college, let alone one of the best public universities in the world. I want to find out how she got to where she…
Update: On December 28, President Obama has designated Bears Ears as a national monument. This historic action to protect an unique and culturally important land is part of our nation’s legacy to honor Native Americans and our shared history. In southeast Utah, five sovereign Native American nations have come together as the Bears Ears Inter-tribal…
The Hewlett Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness (OE) program, created in 2004, seeks to help the foundation’s grantees be high-performing organizations, making their work – and ours – more likely to succeed. OE provides small grants to build grantees’ internal capacity in areas like strategic planning, board development, fundraising, and communications. In 2014, the foundation commissioned Social …
UPDATE: On October 12, parties to the Montreal Protocol reached an agreement to phase out use of climate-changing hydrofluorocarbons. “This is a historic moment in the fight to mitigate global warming, as well as a unique opportunity to improve quality of life in developing nations,” said Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which …
What do you believe the arts sector ought to look like twenty years from now? This is a question that every arts funder should be able to answer with a healthy amount of specificity. Whether arts funders choose to acknowledge it or not, much of what we do shapes the future of the field. This …
Research follows one rhythm, policy another. Researchers arrive at study questions, design fieldwork, collect and analyze new data, figure out what it means, write up technical articles, and then – and only then – may translate their new knowledge into policy recommendations. Sometimes they have to get funding along the way, which slows the whole …
Hold onto your seats, evidence enthusiasts! Whether you’re a fan of evidence-informed policymaking, evidence-based decisions, or just what works, you’re in for an action-packed few weeks. Not even the most globetrotting devotee could make all the events September and October have in store, so here is a quick guide to what’s on, what we’re watching for, …