Central Valley Community Foundation

Despite California’s tremendous recent success in reducing teen pregnancies, the Central Valley still has some of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation. Support from the Hewlett Foundation has succeeded not only in supporting teen pregnancy prevention programs but also in increasing the Fresno Regional Foundation’s commitment to teen pregnancy prevention, including making several grants for teen pregnancy prevention with its own non-Hewlett funds. This grant will enable the Fresno Regional Foundation to support local teen pregnancy prevention programs and continue its efforts to educate the community about the importance of this issue and its impact on the well-being of children and families.

Although California has had tremendous success relative to other states in reducing teen pregnancy rates, California's Central San Joaquin Valley still has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates of any region in the nation. This grant would enable the Fresno Regional Foundation to continue its teen pregnancy prevention program, launched with support from Hewlett in 2007, which awards competitive grants to local organizations providing sex education and family planning services. During the prior three years the Fresno Regional Foundation assembled an advisory group of local community leaders and national teen pregnancy experts which has cultivated valuable proposals from a wide range of organizations reaching teens in schools, Boys and Girls Clubs, detention facilities and rural community shelters. In addition to directly serving the teens and families in the Central Valley this project is making important progress in elevating the issue of teen pregnancy within the community and building the Fresno Regional Foundation as a skilled and committed donor to the issue. In the past year the Fresno Regional Foundation's board supplemented the Hewlett support by allocating discretionary funds to teen pregnancy prevention and has set a goal of raising an additional $150,000 from new donors in the next grant period to further expand their grantmaking on this important topic.