We celebrate and honor the Black community on Juneteenth. We continue to reflect on the ways that we can support an end to systemic racism and work towards equity.
This is the fourth year of the Gobioff Foundation’s Juneteenth grant-making. The program started initially as a reaction to the horrible murder of George Floyd and a way to acknowledge the accountability we had as philanthropists in a system that continues to marginalize the Black community. In 2021 we announced that every year on Juneteenth we would highlight 5 organizations to receive $20,000 in the form of an unrestricted grant from the Gobioff Foundation.
While we continue to reflect, we also celebrate. We celebrate the Black community and the organizations that support them and raise their voices. We celebrate the people fighting on behalf of the marginalized and working towards a world that no longer needs them to fight. We celebrate the creators, the leaders, the advocates, and the teachers.
This year we have identified 5 specific areas that strongly impact the road to liberation and equity. Those areas are Youth, Education, Criminal Justice, LGBTQ, and Health.
While we choose Juneteenth as a day to recognize and celebrate, the Gobioff Foundation continues to grow throughout the year. We embrace new introductions and deepen existing relationships in the community. We welcome new opportunities to support the community. If you have an organization you’d like us to consider in future years or if you’d like to volunteer to be on a committee to help us make these decisions, please contact us at juneteenth@gobioff-foundation.org.
The Gobioff Foundation challenges everyone to stand up. Show up. Listen. Act. Be more than an ally, be an accomplice. Not just today, but on all days, Black Lives Matter.
Neil Gobioff
President, Gobioff Foundation
The five organizations receiving $20,000 unrestricted grants from the Gobioff Foundation this year are:
Youth
The Black Youth Leadership Project
About: “The Black Youth Leadership Project (BYLP) is an organization dedicated to empowering and uplifting black youth through leadership development, educational opportunities, and community engagement. BYLP aims to address the unique challenges and barriers that black youth face by equipping them with the skills, resources, and support necessary to succeed academically, professionally, and socially. We believe in nurturing leadership qualities, fostering academic achievement, and promoting social emotional supports to change behaviors through mindfulness and development of communication skills.”
Education
Black Teacher Project
“Our Vision The Black Teacher Project (BTP), is a program that sustains and develops Black teachers to lead and reimagine schools as communities of liberated learning. BTP’s vision is that every student will benefit from the diversity, excellence, and leadership of an empowered Black teaching force.
Black teachers are essential. The purpose and vision of the Black Teacher Project is rooted in research that shows Black teachers have higher expectations for Black students, who thereby perform better; all students prefer Black and Hispanic teachers; and non-Black students benefit from Black teachers by having a role model across racial differences. While supporting teachers in their work, BTP ultimately strives to ensure more equitable processes and outcomes for students who will lead us to a just society. Therefore, the Black Teacher Project’s motto is “Every child deserves a Black teacher.”
Criminal Justice
Sentencing Project
“Mission
The Sentencing Project advocates for effective and humane responses to crime that minimize imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults by promoting racial, ethnic, economic, and gender justice.
Core policy priorities
Our policy priorities envision the full inclusion in society of people with criminal records and an end to extreme punishments. Our aim is to center the leadership, voices, vision, and experience of those directly affected by mass incarceration to make the rationale for systemic change vivid, credible, and compelling.
These priorities are central to our fundamental underlying goal of promoting racial justice by focusing on the cornerstones of the criminal legal system that act to undermine the power of the Black community and ensure that Black community members are drawn into the criminal legal system and incapacitated for years, decades, and often life.”
LGBTQ
Lavender Rights Project
Mission: “Lavender Rights Project elevates the power, autonomy, and leadership of the Black intersex & gender diverse community through intersectional legal and social services. We utilize the law as an organizing principle to affirm our civil rights and self-determination.
Our organization disrupts oppressive systems that target Black gender diverse and intersex communities of color and lead to disproportionate levels of poverty, housing disparities, and gender-based violence, especially among Black and Indigenous people. “
Health
Prevention Institute
About: “Prevention Institute (PI) is a national nonprofit with offices in Oakland, Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington, D.C. Our mission is to build prevention and health equity into key policies and actions at the federal, state, local, and organizational level to ensure that the places where all people live, work, play and learn to foster health, safety and wellbeing. Since 1997, we have partnered with communities, local government entities, foundations, multiple sectors, and public health agencies to bring cutting-edge research, practice, strategy, and analysis to the pressing health and safety concerns of the day. We have applied our approach to injury and violence prevention, healthy eating and active living, land use, health systems transformation, and mental health and wellbeing, among other issues.”