The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
has announced $125,063,230 in new grants to 214 organizations. These grants are distributed to organizations focused on several key areas: “global development, education, performing arts, philanthropy, the environment, and population”. The interesting concept behind these grants is that they are not only for American based organizations. Instead, many of these are for international organizations based in continents around the world; thus expanding resources to around the world, building communications, a consolidated sense of community, and to help provide basic needs to elevate the living standards of citizens in other countries.
For global development, the focuses of grants are on organizations’ training and programs to measure government accountability and resource budgets. In order for developing countries to thrive, their government must live up to their word of subsidies and resource distributions in appropriate programs and resources. However, with new democracies, often times the measurements of accountabilities are not yet in place. These grants help establish programs and train organizations to measure government accountability.
Second, in areas of education, the foundation’s grant’s main focus is in providing school districts with programs to increase teacher retention and student performance. Their other focus in this area of grants is the establishment and thriving capability of a new program that “increase(s) coverage of education policy in ethnic media”.
As for the area of performing arts, the grant provides money to renovate one of San Francisco’s hub of alternative performance buildings and provide professional musicians and performers to everyday school teachers to assist them with encouraging and educating students in disadvantaged districts.
The philanthropy department focused on non-profit organization. The grant gave money to organizations that would account for non-profits’ accountability and for law schools to teach their future lawyers in issues involving the world of non-profits.
Next, the environmental pledge is focused on programs and planning’s that will slow down global warming, decrease CO2 emissions, and protecting land and water in the Western United States.
The last area of award is to population. What this category focuses on is family planning and AIDS prevention worldwide. A good amount of grants recipient are mainly in other countries with high levels of AIDS, lower levels of AIDS awareness, and even less understanding and help with family planning. However, another significant amount of money was also granted to “The Population Program” that supports family planning within the United States.
Overall, the amount of grants and areas of focus is a great positive step towards awareness, world cohesion, and human assistance.
