Battle Academy Welcome Dinner

Inspired by the Causeway challenge about transforming public education, Battle Academy PTA wanted to host a Welcome Dinner. Their goal is to use the dinner as a first step in breaking down walls by allowing families to come together with educators over a simple meal to create an educational bond that will support better learning. Slated for August 17, 2016 alongside Kindergarten and First Grade Orientation, this event has the potential to reach 160 students, their caregivers, and indirectly our Chattanooga community.

So, what will happen exactly? In keeping with the theme of building connections, the key is to have food provided by a restaurant connected to the area, not just a corporate pizza chain. They’ve reached out to Miss Griffin’s Footlong Hotdogs, located on Main Street, to provide the main course and T and T Produce to provide healthy fruit and vegetable sides. During the evening, kids will work on a friendship mural together with the art teacher, Mrs. Bowling. Allowing the students to work together away from the parents, gives parents and teachers a time to meet each other, connect, and start building relationships. Joseph Schlabs, a local photographer has generously donated his services to be on site with a backdrop, lighting source, and professional camera doing studio style family photos which they will be able to download for free. The key is that all of this is FREE for the families. The PTA will also have a presence during the evening with opportunities for parents to sign up as a room parent, mentoring, and more.

Chattanooga 2.0 highlighted the need to create a community with parents, teachers, and kids. Battle Academy PTA decided to take action. The UNFoundation wanted to be a part of this critical piece of our education revitalization. After all, we fund cool ideas.

Women Helping Women

A lot of people come of age thinking about the day they start their family. Babysitting, spending time with nieces or nephews, and supporting friends with children give some insight to the time when that life altering decision is made. The part nobody talks about? 49% of pregnancies in the US are unplanned. That number's 80% for young women under 19. The magic moment where a woman decides to bring a life into the world just doesn't happen half the time, limiting those women's opportunity for greater educational attainment and higher earnings with it. 

A Step Ahead Foundation Chattanooga has been working in our area for two years to facilitate access to free, long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) for women with the fewest barriers possible—that means assistance setting appointments, free transportation to a healthcare provider, and payment for the LARC of her choice. To further their reach and to help ensure the three groups identified as most at risk: single women, black women, and women with less education or income, are educated and empowered about their reproductive choices, A Step Ahead will be hiring community ambassadors. Their $1500 grant will provide training for 10 women of color to spend 150 hours in their own communities advocating for more dependable birth control options in settings ranging from health fairs to one-on-one counseling. With birth control that allows women to really plan for their families, we'll have healthier babies and a more equitable future for our city. 

CGLA Hygiene Toolkit

Seven years after opening its doors as a vibrant learning community for educationally underserved girls, the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy (CGLA) has grown into an exemplar for outside-the-box public education in our city.

While the school's been commended for academic performance, athletics, and arts, it still faces a common challenge for our area: 97% of its students live below the poverty line. That means that students' families are struggling to make ends meet for daily extras that come about with their girls hitting puberty. CGLA, with the help of The Hutton Company, is providing a resource closet for coming-of-age like deodorant, shampoo, feminine hygiene products, and spare uniforms so the girls who need it most never have to feel out of place or unprepared. Just $50 will buy these products for a student for a year, meaning that our $2500 grant will impact 50 girls daily for the next 12 months thanks to Hutton's work. Cheers to helping close the gap and bringing girls to school ready to shatter some glass ceiling.

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!