Cinematics Film Series

What can film offer as a tool to shape the larder public conscience? Not as a high-dollar mental escape in a cool dark room, but as the centerpiece for a lively meeting of the minds?

Society of Work and The Chattery have teamed up to begin a year-long film series they're calling Cinematics. Each free public screening with present a film around a theme followed by a panel discussion to explore how that month's theme plays out in our own community...and they'll have pizza and beer just for the heck of it. Our $2000 grant will fund the screening fees for each of the six Cinematics experiences scheduled so far. 

With its first event partnering with The Women's Fund of Greater Chattanooga to show The Hunting Ground, a film about sexual assault on college campuses in the US, we're excited for the meaningful conversation around sensitive issues. And really, isn't cultivating empathy and citizen engagement through relationships what it's all about?

Calvin Donaldson at the Nature Center

As a capstone field trip for the year, Calvin Donaldson Environmental Science Academy's 55 4th grade students will travel to the Reflection Riding Nature Center to put faces with the names of species they've been learning about all year. If the best way to appreciate nature and natural processes is by forming a personal relationship, then these young Chattanoogans are setting off on the right foot!

Film Awards for Chatt Film Fest

The Chattanooga Film Festival brings something undoubtedly special to our city. Every spring, the cinema nerd comes out in all of us as the buzz of one of the city's signature events comes to life. We're proud to play a small part this this tradition by supporting, for the third year, the Festival's Best Film and Best Short Film winner's prizes, $1000 and $500 respectively. 

Pollinator Garden

With pollinators facing threat from colony collapse, habitat loss, and reduced biodiversity, Crabtree farms is taking steps to increase public awareness and provide a habitat for our pollinator species like honey bees, butterflies, and even birds. Without these species, we'd be unable to cultivate 1/3 of our food crops, so for a nonprofit farm to encourage protection of these important species is a thoughtful and potent endeavor. 

Foster Closet

The Foster Closet, brainchild of Chattanooga Area Foster and Adoptive Care Association founders Brett and Amanda Senentz, aims to make foster life a bit easier by putting critical resources at the fingertips of parents and social workers who find themselves in immediate need. Often, when children enter the foster system, they do so suddenly and seriously underprepared. In the rush of packing after a traumatic event, essentials can be left behind, making a fresh start that much more difficult for both parents and children. It's at this point that the Foster Closet is a unique resource—beyond the basics of clothes and shoes, the closet includes toys and books that can create a sense of comfort and familiarity even in transition. 

This month's $2000 grant will help Foster Closet pay rent for the remainder of 2016, with money left over to reach out to area parents and partner organizations to ensure this resource is available to anyone who needs it. Now that's stretching a buck!

Tyner After School Kids

Tyner After School Kids, or TASK, is an after school program for children in grades 1-3 who are below proficiency in reading, math, or both. In collaboration with Bess T. Shepherd Elementary School and Tyner United Methodist Church, students identified as at-risk are provided a place to thrive in their weakest subjects for the first time. Discipline-specific Lexia (reading) and and IXL (math) learning software is balanced with one on one instruction during TASK's 90-minute sessions to a remarkable result--87% of students in this program achieve grade level proficiency by the end of the school year in May.

With $2000, TASK's organizers Earl Whittaker and Nancy Alexander are able to increase the student group from 30 to 35 young learners at a time.

SPLASH Winter Workshop

Charlie Newton, Executive Director of SPLASH Youth Arts Workshop, will be putting our November grant to work over the winter school break by providing free art classes to kids in the College Hill Courts area. Charlie, who grew up on the Westside and later went on to cultivate a successful career as an artist, has responded to the void in arts education for many local school children. He sees the 8 hours he and his staff will spend teaching each of this session's 40 students  as an opportunity to pull them away from the negative influence of gangs and crime and to foster new creative and personal skills that go beyond their time with SPLASH. In learning to draw the human figure, for instance, Charlie estimates his students will hone knowledge in topics such as anatomy and art history to focus, critique, self-awareness, and confidence. It's big picture work boiled down and concentrated into small but powerful interactions. 

Kids Aren't Trash

When children enter the foster system, they do so suddenly. An event triggers intervention and quickly the child is removed from a home where he or she is in danger. There isn't time to prepare, nevermind to pack, and the child's belongings are collected into trash bags. A child who has just experienced significant trauma or neglect is now forced to see her favorite items as trash.

Luckily Partnership for Families, Children, and Adults presented an opportunity to intervene with their Kids Aren't Trash campaign. Our dollars went to prepare suitcase care packages stuffed with a blanket, towel, toiletries, and stuffed animal or game for 40 children entering the foster system in the coming months. These items are theirs to keep and present an opportunity for dignity rather than despair at a time when it's desperately needed.