Communities – Page 55 – Knight Foundation

Program Area: Communities

For membership in the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, a funder collaborative advancing interdisciplinary and transformative thinking and philanthropic action toward more environmentally sustainable, socially equitable and economically prosperous regions and communities.

To design an all ages and all abilities bicycling network across Central San Jose and share lessons learned with a national audience.

To enhance Macon’s Medical Corridor & attract more customers to our anchor medical institutions by launching a Health Tourism initiative to attract new patient populations. MAP 1.1.a & 1.2.e

To support San Jose’s manufacturing sector and create work opportunities for individuals with barriers to employment through the creation of Manufacture San Jose.

MIAMI – October 19, 2017 – Parades, street theater, open-air debates, festivals: These were once part of America’s culture of voting, and Citizen University aims to revive them. Citizen University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are thrilled to announce the winners of an open call for projects that will generate creative celebrations and joyful public rituals that encourage people to vote. 

Winners are being announced in Miami; Wichita, Kansas and St. Paul Minnesota. Projects selected in Akron, Ohio; West Palm Beach, Florida; Grand Forks, North Dakota; and Charlotte, North Carolina will focus on elections set for November 2018. 

With $200,000 from Knight Foundation, Seattle nonprofit Citizen University is partnering with activists, artists, organizers and everyday citizens to launch initiatives in these seven cities across the country to generate localized, action-oriented projects that foster a stronger culture of voting.

“Ensuring people come out to vote is essential to building a stronger democracy,” said George Abbott, Knight Foundation director for community and national initiatives. “The Joy of Voting is a simple idea that seeks to change the culture around voting and make it more fun. Driven by citizens, for citizens it pushes people to get involved in their community in an organic and fun way.”

Through the Joy of Voting project, Citizen University aims to address a growing trend of lower voter turnout in local elections. The project kicks off this year with initiatives in Miami, St. Paul and Wichita, and will continue in 2018 in Akron, West Palm Beach, Grand Forks and Charlotte.

The Joy of Voting project derives its vision from an article in The Atlantic written by Citizen University founder and CEO Eric Liu, in which he asserts that it’s possible to revive 18th and 19th century practices of raucous, participatory activity and pageantry around elections.

“Instead of ‘eat your vegetables’ or ‘do your duty,’ voting should feel more like ‘join the club,’” said Liu. “Or better yet, ‘join the party.’”

MIAMI

Winning organizations in Miami include Comic Cure, Miami Dade College’s Institute for Civic Engagement and Democracy, Engage Miami, The Plantain and the New Florida Majority Education Fund.

The projects range from Comic Cure’s late-night entertainment show hosted by Billy Corben, to a satirical video created by The Plantain. The New Florida Majority and Engage Miami will host several separate, get-out-the-vote themed parties in neighborhoods around the city, and local residents will discover unique, personalized yard signs created by MDC students on lawns around town.

WICHITA

In Wichita, the Joy of Voting winners are the League of Creative Interventionists, Episcopal Social Services, KMUW, Sheenika Medard’s First Gen Woes program, and Sara Dixon with colleague Stephanie Huff.

The projects in Wichita include a pop-up Voting Celebration Station hosted by the League of Creative Interventionists, ESS’ Soapbox Series that provides a literal platform for voters and public officials to share their thoughts, and a spoken word competition for high school students led by nationally recognized spoken word artist Sheenika Medard. Sara Dixon, in collaboration with videographer Stephanie Huff, will host Canine Candidates, a mock election with dogs as candidates, and videos that address the issues that Wichita dogs face. At all these events, look for a series of unique ‘VoteICT’ shirts and wearable stickers designed by local artists for KMUW’s initiative.

ST. PAUL

St. Paul’s winning organizations include Next in Nonprofits, The Theatre of Public Policy, Concordia University of St. Paul, Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, and Erika Herrmann of Arty Bark Park in collaboration with Shari Aronson and Chris Griffith. Citizen University is receiving support in St. Paul from The Springboard for the Arts in St. Paul.

The Theatre of Public Policy will host a mayoral forum on November 3 featuring all the leading candidates in this year’s race, with all their answers brought to life through live unscripted improv comedy. Other projects will take place in varied locations around town, as Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop spreads the word about local elections with handcrafted puppets, and Herrmann works with Aronson and Griffith of Z Puppets Rosenschnoz to get the vote out among St. Paul citizens through a creative canine campaign. Concordia University students will be found at light rail stations encouraging transit passengers to fill in a custom “I vote because … ” banner while they wait to board. Finally, Next in Nonprofits will have real soapboxes at every polling place in the city on Election Day, inviting voters to climb aboard and voice their ideas.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Each project receives $3,600 to complete the work. Already underway, the diverse group of winners will implement their initiatives in advance of the municipal elections taking place on November 7, 2017. The 15 projects in Miami, St. Paul and Wichita will serve as models for what a vibrant, participatory culture of voting could look like.

“During last year’s election cycle, we saw such hunger and excitement around these creative, fun in-person activities. With just a little bit (of) inspiration, it was thrilling to see what projects everyone came up with,” said Ben Phillips, senior program officer at Citizen University and director of the Joy of Voting project. “We can’t wait to see what sort of creativity is unleashed around the local elections this year.”

Citizen University piloted the program in four cities for the November 2016 general election. This year, the projects move out of the federal domain to focus on mayoral and municipal elections taking place in each city. The local focus will amplify a key component of the Joy of Voting program: to unite neighbors around claiming power within their communities.

“Joy of Voting projects bridge the critical gap between the right to vote and the desire to vote,” said Sara Yousuf, founder and board member at Engage Miami. “These projects do the critical work of reminding people of the excitement and power that comes with taking part in the civic process.”

“Wichita Public Radio is thrilled to participate for a second year in the Joy of Voting initiative,” said Sarah Jane Crespo, director of community engagement for KMUW. “The energy it brought to our area last year was remarkable, and because civic engagement continues to be critical for healthy communities, we hope that it will continue to invigorate Wichita in this off year.”

“Springboard is delighted to partner on the Joy of Voting project,” said Carl Atiya Swanson, associate director at Springboard for the Arts. “Art and artists continually create experiences that bring people together and form moments of connection, curiosity and joy. Bringing that power and attention to civic engagement and the importance of voting deepens the role art plays in our lives.”

Visit www.joyofvoting.us for more details on the events and activities in Miami, St. Paul and Wichita. 

Joy of Voting will continue in 2018 when it moves to four other cities around the country hosting local and midterm elections: Akron, West Palm Beach, Grand Forks and Charlotte. Check back here next year for information on getting involved in these four cities.

Support for Citizen University forms one part of Knight Foundation’s efforts to invest in civic innovators who help cities attract and keep talented people, expand economic opportunity and create a culture of engagement. The foundation believes that designing places to achieve these goals is crucial to city success.

For more information on Citizen University, visit citizenuniversity.us.

About Citizen University

Citizen University is a national nonprofit based in Seattle that promotes and teaches the art of powerful citizenship. In addition to the Joy of Voting, programs and initiatives include the Civic Collaboratory, a civic leadership network; Sworn-Again America, a project on civic rituals; the Citizen University National Conference; and programs and resources to teach civic power. For more, visit citizenuniversity.us.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.

Contact:

Ben Phillips, Senior Program Manager, Citizen University, 360-305-8568, [email protected]

Anusha Alikhan, Director of Communications, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 305-908-2646, [email protected]

Photo: Citizen University CEO Eric Liu at the Annual National Conference in Seattle March 18-19, 2016. Photo by  Alabastro Photography.

To conduct a comprehensive economic analysis of the Macon Action Plan (MAP) to inform future focus and investments in the Plan’s Economic Development priorities.

MIAMI – Oct. 17, 2017 –  To help eligible immigrants (green card holders) become citizens and participate more fully in the civic life, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation today announced $1.5 million in new funding to the New Americans Campaign.

American citizens have many advantages over lawful permanent residents. Their spending power increases, they can vote, serve on juries, and run for office. Yet, many individuals eligible to become citizens are faced with barriers— including cost, limited knowledge of the process or eligibility requirements, as well as lack of access to legal assistance, and relevant civics or English classes.

The New Americans Campaign is a national collaborative that equips local organizations with the knowledge and resources they need to help lawful permanent residents overcome these barriers and complete citizenship applications. Since 2011, the campaign’s affiliates have generated more than 300,000 applications for naturalization, 45,000 of them in Knight communities.

Knight’s latest investment in the New Americans Campaign adds to the foundation’s prior funding of more than $2 million to assist immigrant groups and to support agencies working nationally and at the grassroots level. Knight was a founding funder of the campaign.

Funding will expand the campaign to three additional cities where Knight invests including Akron, Ohio; St. Paul, Minnesota and Philadelphia. It will also continue services in existing sites where the program operates in Detroit; Charlotte, North Carolina; Miami; and San Jose, California.

The Immigrant Legal Resource Center based in San Francisco is leading the effort. The Center, with more than 30 years of experience and expertise in naturalization law, has led the New Americans Campaign since 2011.

“It is significant that Knight Foundation, as a co-founder of the New Americans Campaign, is doubling down on its commitment to innovating naturalization assistance,” said Melissa Rodgers of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center who directs the New Americans Campaign. “New data show that there is a large increase in the number of eligible immigrants who are interested in becoming U.S. citizens. We expect over a million to apply this year. Helping them is a historic opportunity to strengthen the very fabric of the United States.”

“Through the New Americans Campaign, we hope to support more engaged communities, as lawful permanent residents who naturalize gain the right to vote and to fully engage in the civic life of their community,” said Sam Gill, Knight Foundation vice president for communities and impact.

The funding will support nonpartisan direct naturalization services over two years in seven cities where Knight invests. To advance the effort, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center will work with a diverse group of national and local partners with the goal of ensuring access to naturalization services for all interested permanent legal residents.

In addition, to supporting immigration service in seven Knight cities, funding will also bolster the New American Campaign’s Innovation Fund, which tests innovative strategies that may assist in the naturalization process. In addition, the investment will advance collaboration between cities and partners encouraging knowledge sharing and the development of best practices, while building local capacity, and supporting the campaign’s annual conference.

To learn more about the New Americans Campaign visit www.newamericanscampaign.org.   

About the New Americans Campaign 

Led by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the New Americans Campaign is a diverse nonpartisan national network of respected immigration organizations, legal services providers, faith-based organizations, immigrant rights groups, foundations and community leaders. The Campaign transforms the way aspiring citizens navigate the path to becoming new Americans. It is committed to connecting lawful permanent residents (LPRs) to trusted legal assistance and critical information that simplifies the naturalization process.

Past and current national funders of the Campaign include California Wellness Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, Grove Foundation, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, John, S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and The JPB Foundation.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.

Contact: Anusha Alikhan, Director of Communications, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 305-908-2646, [email protected]

Today, Knight is announcing $1.5 million in support to the New Americans Campaign. Knight was a founding funder of the campaign, a national collaborative that equips local organizations with the knowledge and resources they need to help lawful permanent residents become U.S. citizens.

In the middle of a heated debate on immigration in America, one population attracts relatively little attention: the 8.8 million legal permanent residents eligible to become American citizens. Since 2011 the New Americans Campaign has been working to ensure that eligible green card holders are able to become naturalized U.S. citizens.

There are many reasons to become a naturalized citizen of the United States. U.S. citizens are able to register and vote in elections. They can travel freely in and out of the country, and they have better economic prospects too. Many jobs and benefits are open only to U.S. citizens. Of course, not everyone wants to naturalize and become a citizen. But for those who are eligible and do want to naturalize, the process should be accessible.

For many eligible legal permanent residents there are currently significant barriers to becoming a citizen through the naturalization process. The application fee alone is more than $700 – a significant barrier for the 55 percent of eligible immigrants whose household income is less than 250 percent of the federal poverty level. The application form is long and complex. In most cases it’s important to have legal counsel review your application before submitting it. All the while, divisive rhetoric has increased the fear factor around providing personal details to the federal government – particularly for those in mixed-status families.

The New Americans Campaign works to ensure that all eligible immigrants who want to become citizens have the opportunity to do so. The campaign’s local partners offer citizenship workshops, information and naturalization resources directly to eligible green card holders in the community. The campaign also includes an Innovation Fund to incentivize new approaches to service delivery, correlates and shares best practices from the field and produces an annual convening for all campaign members.

This new support will expand the campaign to incorporate partners in cities where Knight invests including Akron, Ohio; St. Paul, Minnesota and Philadelphia. These will augment existing sites where the program operates in Detroit; Charlotte, North Carolina; Miami; and San Jose, California. Over the first six years of the campaign, partners have generated more than 45,000 applications for citizenship in Knight communities. Nationwide, partners have produced more than 300,000 applications. It’s estimated that services provided to applicants have a cumulative value of more than $260 million in savings from legal and application fees.

Demand for citizenship is anticipated to remain high even as the processing time for naturalization applications continues to grow. The length of time that an application takes to be reviewed before the final step in the process, the in-person interview, has increased to more than nine months on average.

As Knight seeks to build more informed and engaged communities, we believe that citizenship should be accessible to all who qualify for it. We look forward to working alongside the campaign and its local partners to achieve that goal in the next two years.

Corey White is the manager of alumni leadership development at Teach For America Miami-Dade. Below he writes about the Knight-supported Teach for America Startup Summer program, which provides young people with essential entrepreneurship skills.  

School is back in session here in Miami-Dade County, and many teachers are thinking about ways to expose their students to rigorous, enriching lessons that will ignite their inherent potential, while also equipping them with the practical skills and mindsets needed to thrive in our changing world. To help them on this path, a unique program created by Teach For America provided Miami educators with exposure and connections to Miami’s thriving startup scene that helped prepare them to deliver on these goals throughout the year.

Startup Summer completed its fourth season, in which 11 Miami-Dade teachers collectively contributed over 1,400 hours of service to eight local startup companies over their five-week internship. The program invites Miami-Dade teachers to spend their summer interning with local startups and receive entrepreneurial workshops and training throughout the year. It also provides them with a greater understanding of the opportunities in and outside classrooms, so they can help narrow opportunity gaps in underserved Miami neighborhoods.

Since the program was brought to life in 2014, Startup Summer has enlisted nearly 60 Teach For America educators who have contributed over 7,000 hours to startup companies throughout Miami.

Startup Summer provides a rich learning opportunity for these hungry, forward-thinking educators, giving them first-hand experience working with leaders and companies who are thinking differently about how we teach and learn; it also helps them build skills that directly translate to their classrooms and communities. “Being able to offer more resources that will expose [students] to a world of new things they can take advantage of could change their lives in ways I can’t even imagine”, says Bria Gay-Mitchell. Bria is a middle school math teacher at North County K-8 Center, and this summer she served as an intern with Wyncode, where she worked extensively with their Coding Camp. “This is something that I hope to take back with me as I prepare for the upcoming school year.”

Teach For America educators and their students aren’t the only parties who have benefited from this program. The mutual exchange of knowledge, perspective and skill sets has also assisted startup partners in driving towards their goals. “Startup Summer has significantly impacted the success of Wyncode,” says Bianca Monaco, campus director at Wyncode. “Having a summer intern that was able to take their transferable skills of organizational management and systematic planning from teaching makes these candidates exceptionally effective in a startup environment. So much so, that we have offered positions to second year Teach For America corps members. Some have chosen to stay in the classroom while others have been able to join our team and make a difference in the growth of Miami tech.”

The partnership between Teach For America and Knight Foundation underscores the long-term commitment that both organizations have made to create a more equitable, informed, inclusive and engaged Miami driven by a vibrant innovation ecosystem. Startup Summer has allowed both organizations to see that vision materialize in a real way. To learn more about Startup Summer, our interns and startup placement partners, visit: tfatostartupmiami.com.

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To build a signature co-working space and accelerator in downtown Saint Paul, with a focus on minority entrepreneurs.

Joel A. Nichols is a library administrator for data strategy and evaluation at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Below he writes about a May 2017 initiative launched by Knight Foundation and Niantic, the creators of Pokémon GO, to explore how technology can foster community engagement in several cities where Knight invests.

This summer the Free Library teamed up with Knight Foundation and Niantic, maker of Pokémon, to bring the popular mobile game to five of our neighborhood libraries. We asked our staff to think about the parks, murals, statues, paths, gardens, buildings, businesses and organizations around their libraries, and recommend neighborhood spots to become custom Pokéstops. We hoped that bringing neighbors and library visitors around these interesting spaces would encourage them to connect and explore their neighborhoods and share what they discovered.

To ensure that this pilot project addressed digital access barriers, we created paper maps to hand out to players who were participating without a phone. Those completing the crawl, either analog or virtual, earned a custom Pokémon GO poster.

Players were invited to these PokéStops and PokéCrawls with in-app messages from the Free Library such as, “Did you know that Marconi Plaza was designed and built as a grand entrance to the 1926 Sesquicentennial International Exposition? This event marked the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Find out about this and more at the Fumo Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia.”

We wanted this project to interact with our robust summer learning program, the Summer of Wonder. The Summer of Wonder encourages all Philadelphians to read for fun and to explore learning opportunities during the summer months. This was accomplished through completing activities and programs as part of a series of “learning paths” that participants can adapt to their needs and interests along the way. We linked up some of these activities and programs to our PokéStops.

In Point Breeze, for example, a small park featuring a mural by artist Keith Haring hosted a block party including a visit from the artist’s sister, Kay Haring. Kay read and discussed the book she wrote about her brother “Keith Haring: The Boy Who Just Kept Drawing.”

For other library activities and events, we were also able to turn on lures inside the game. Lures attract Pokémon for capture, and consequently attract more participants, drawing new audiences into our programs.

We want to try to replicate similar experiments in the fall, as part of an ambitious plan to transform outdoor spaces at two neighborhood libraries into playful learning terrains over the next two years. We hope that Pokémon Go might lead residents visiting our two libraries to explore their neighborhood and its natural surroundings, including a reservoir that is being revitalized after years of blight, and Bartram’s Mile, a new trail that provides direct access to the river.

The experiment taught us that there are valuable ways of using augmented reality experiences like Pokémon Go to attract people to our libraries, encourage them to create new paths of discovery and learning, and engage them in conversations about the spaces and places in their neighborhoods.