From supporting China in its work to develop “green” cities to underwriting a project to share teacher lesson plans worldwide, the Board of Directors of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation authorized $152.1 million in new grants to 229 organizations this fall.
The new grants were a part of more than $480.6 million that the Foundation has authorized to date in 2007.
Organizations receiving grants ranged across the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout the world in the Foundation’s six primary areas of grantmaking: education, population, global development, the environment, performing arts and philanthropy. Among the highlights of the grants awarded in November are:
Education – Bringing Tools to the World’s Teachers
The Education Program made $8,976,500 in grants to 34 organizations.
This set of grants broke new ground in the Program’s pioneering work in the Open Educational Resources field, which brings free, high-quality educational materials to the Internet, where users can reorganize, augment and republish course materials to suit their needs. A $500,000 grant will allow Seattle-based Teachers Without Borders to partner with the children’s educational publisher Scholastic, Inc., to create a Web site where K-8 teachers can find lesson plans and other educational tools. The partnership marks one of the first forays by a commercial publisher into the nonprofit world of Open Educational Resources. A $100,000 grant to the Commonwealth of Learning, an intergovernmental agency based in Vancouver, will be used to develop WikiEducator, a Web-based tool to allow educators to share resources.
For students at community colleges, textbook costs can be a significant obstacle to education. The Center for Public Interest Research in Boston was awarded $530,000 to help develop faculty awareness of Open Educational Resources as an alternative source of textbooks.
Population – Integrating AIDS Prevention into Reproductive Health
The Population Program, which funds work on reproductive health regionally and worldwide, made $25,884,500 in grants to 30 organizations.
The Program issued a number of grants to encourage the integration of AIDS prevention work into programs that deal more broadly with reproductive health. Among recipients was the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Brighton, England, which received $450,000 for a pilot program to encourage this integration among its partners in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. The Washington, D.C.-based Global AIDS Alliance received a grant of $250,000 for similar work as a way to combat the disproportionate impact of AIDS on women in poor countries. And the Tides Foundation in San Francisco received $1.55 million to fund projects in sub-Saharan Africa that will incorporate family planning into HIV/AIDS programs and study the impact of the change.
Closer to home, as part of the Foundation’s commitment to disadvantaged communities in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area, the Population Program, with contributions from the Environment and Philanthropy programs, awarded $1,405,000 to the Fresno Regional Foundation to redistribute to organizations that combat teen pregnancy and work to improve air quality. The Hewlett Foundation anticipates that these grants also will help strengthen the Fresno Regional Foundation as a philanthropic institution for the region.
Global Development – Improving Education in Developing Countries
The Global Development Program made $20,585,500 in grants to 28 organizations.
Among the new grants was one for $1,225,000 to the Poverty Action Lab, an academic center in Chennai, India, to enable it to evaluate the effectiveness of a large-scale reading program in India.
The Foundation also awarded $2,983,000 in grants to two organizations as part of its partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The partnership was created to improve the quality of education in developing countries.
The first of these two grants extended $1.95 million to the Foundation for the Application and Teaching of the Sciences in Cali, Columbia. The organization, known by its Spanish acronym FUNDAEC, is a nonprofit organization that provides secondary education within rural areas of Columbia and other countries in Latin America. The grant will be used to bring FUNDAEC’s educational model to Kenya, Uganda and Zambia. A related $1.28 million grant, this one funded exclusively by Hewlett, will enable a University of California, Berkeley, research project called Scientific Evaluation for Global Action to evaluate the effectiveness of FUNDAEC’s current work in Honduras.
The second of the two grants made in partnership with Gates provided $1,033,000 to ActionAid USA, based in Washington, D.C., for it to begin to engage teachers’ unions, untrained teachers, parents and other aid agencies to improve the quality of education in four African countries.
Environment – Helping China Go Green
The Environment Program announced $38,423,932 in grants to 73 organizations.
Key among them was a grant of $3,435,800 to the Energy Foundation for its work supporting leading Chinese thinkers and policymakers through its China Sustainable Cities Initiative. The initiative is designed to support China’s efforts to develop “green” building and transportation plans.
As part of the Hewlett Foundation’s long-standing commitment to serving San Francisco Bay Area communities, the Environment Program gave $500,000 to the Trust for Public Land for its work building and revitalizing urban parks. The new grant will be used to build or renovate urban parks in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley and Santa Rosa’s Roseland neighborhoods, as well as to help launch a new parks initiative in San Francisco.
Performing Arts – Supporting Arts Education in the East Bay
The Performing Arts Program, with its focus on performing arts in the San Francisco Bay Area, made $7,861,100 in grants to 41 organizations working across a broad range of disciplines.
The Program, in partnership with the Foundation’s Education Program, gave $990,000 to the Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership, a creation of the Alameda County Office of Education designed to provide a variety of arts education resources in the county’s public schools.
Among other awards were a $90,000 grant to the Architectural Foundation of San Francisco to support its Build San Francisco program, which educates high-school students in the appreciation of architecture and the design process; a $120,000 grant to the San Francisco-based CounterPULSE, which produces and presents dance, theater, music and multimedia performances; and a $120,000 grant to support programming at the EastSide Arts Alliance in Oakland, which operates an arts facility that serves low-income residents in the city’s Lower San Antonio and Fruitvale neighborhoods.
The Program also contributed $765,000 to The Creative Work Fund, a program of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund-with the support of the James Irvine Foundation, the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation-that supports projects that involve collaboration between individual artists and cultural organizations.
Philanthropy – Studying Solutions to Social Problems
The Philanthropy Program, which makes grants to promote effective charitable giving, made $2,673,200 in grants to 12 organizations.
A grant of $400,000 to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, a scholarly journal at Stanford University that explores solutions to social problems, will help it redesign its Web site and magazine as it moves toward financial self-sufficiency. And the Duke Foundation Research Program at Duke University, which studies philanthropy, received a grant of $600,000 to help disseminate research about the field.
A full list of the most recent organizations funded, along with links to their Web sites, is available on the Grants page of the Hewlett Foundation Web site.
About The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1967 to help solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. The Foundation concentrates its resources on activities in education, the environment, global development, performing arts, philanthropy and population, and makes grants to support disadvantaged communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. A full list of the Hewlett Foundation’s grants can be found here.