The Greater Green Bay Community Foundation recently awarded more than $89,000 to 14 Northeastern Wisconsin nonprofit agencies and programs through its Funds for Greater Green Bay.

The newest program on the grant roster is the Bellin Foundation's Kidshape/Teenshape program, which received $6,300. The grant subsidized a sliding fee scale to make the program accessible to all.

In recent years, however, the importance of making sure that all children get the best start they can has moved up on the public's agenda. We as a society have seen the positive impact that high-quality child care, prekindergarten education and family support — such as parenting classes — can have on children, families and communities.

To ensure that the children and their families in south-central Kansas succeed, more than 60 organizations from 13 cities have worked together as part of the Visioneering Wichita Birth to Kindergarten Strategic Alliance. We have built a strong coalition that already has successfully attracted public and private dollars to the effort.

This year — a year marked by contentious budget battles in Topeka — we were able to secure more than $1.1 million in state funding, which was matched by more than the required 10 percent in funds from a network of foundations, including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, K.T. Wiedemann Foundation, Wichita Community Foundation, Wellington Community Foundation, Community Foundation of Greater Butler County, and Greater Newton Community Foundation.

The Baltimore Community Foundation has awarded $245,000 in grants to 21 local nonprofits focused on educational programs.

Providing our youth with excellent educational choices and after-school enrichment options is essential to building the next generation of productive workers, homeowners, citizens, and taxpayers, Baltimore Community Foundation CEO Tom Wilcox said in a statement.

The Bridgeport Public Education Fund has received a $25,000 grant from the Fairfield County Community Foundation for its college bound program, Mentoring for Academic Achievement and College Success (MAACS).

The mentoring program pairs college students from Fairfield University, Sacred Heart University and the University of Bridgeport with students from the three Bridgeport public high schools.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has come to Seward and Moose Pass. Each month the Dollywood Foundation mails a brand new, age appropriate book, at no charge, to every child from birth to age 5 who is enrolled.

This program is made possible by the Seward PTSA, grants from the Seward Community Foundation, the City of Seward, Best Beginnings, Rasmuson Foundation, ConocoPhillips, and generous donations made by local businesses and individuals.

Children & Families First (C&FF) has received funding from the Delaware Community Foundation Capital Grants Program.

The $2,500 grant will be used towards the purchase of a Citrix server. Children & Families First currently provides the majority of its services in the community – in clients’ homes, schools, child care centers, etc. – in order to effectively meet the complex needs of the persons we serve. The Citrix platform allows staff to remotely connect to applications from any location.

The recession has hurt Wichita's poor people and their children much harder and faster than social service agencies predicted when it started last year, food charities say. Agencies that track poverty are compiling rapidly rising statistics about Wichita children going hungry, prompting the Wichita Community Foundation to call a July 13 summit of local leaders to figure out how to feed them.

"We've been hearing from people that the supply of food is available, but that some children aren't getting it."

The Kansas Food Bank recently created a statistical snapshot of hunger in Wichita one that shows gaps in service to the poorest people in the community:

In the year ending June 30, 2008, the food bank handed out 6.6 million pounds of food to the pantries it supplies in Wichita and statewide.

The number of children coming into the Lord's Diner every night has jumped 32 percent over last year.

Toedman said many of those children go hungry and that churches, local governments and aid agencies have had to step up food drives and other actions to stave off a possible crisis.

Among the agencies the foundation has invited are the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Communities in Schools, the city of Wichita, the Wichita Police Department, the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, and many charities that help bring food to the poor. They share notes written by hungry children and by those who work with them at schools and food charities.

AmeriCorps volunteers are still set to come to Incline Village this coming year even though Gov. Jim Gibbons and lawmakers didn't approve $365,000 in state funds to qualify for $7.5 million in federal money.

For the upcoming year the Corporation for National and Community service will issue the grant to keep the program funded from 2009 to 2010.

The AmeriCorps Program out of the Parasol Tahoe Community Foundation needs about $370,000 a year, and about $184,000 comes from a mix of state and federal funding. The 15 AmeriCorps volunteers work at local organizations like Tahoe Women's Services, the Tahoe Environmental Research Center, Project MANA, the Incline Village General Improvement District's WasteNot and Senior programs, the Children's Cabinet of Incline Village, the American Red Cross, The Boys and Girls club, the Tahoe Rim Trail Association and the Parasol Tahoe Community Foundation.

Originally when the bill didn't pass there was a lot of concern because AmeriCorps is such a big part of our community, said Allison Becker, AmeriCorps Program Director for the Parasol Tahoe Community Foundation. The threat of not having an AmeriCorps is pretty huge for some organizations because of the economic times.

As for the state program, Shawn Lecker-Pomaville, chief executive officer of Nevada Volunteers, which oversees Nevada's AmeriCorps program, says $32,000 is needed by early October just to keep the federal dollars coming in while efforts continue to find the full $365,000 in state or private funds.

The state money is needed to ensure the program gets $7.5 million in other funding for the next two fiscal years, starting on Wednesday and running through mid-2011. The other funding is a mix of dollars from federal, private and other non-state sources.

If we lose AmeriCorps, we really lose a major cog in the community and volunteering service sector of Nevada, she said.

In 2008, 139 AmeriCorps members, mostly college-age Nevadans who were paid minimum-wage salaries, worked in various education, human service, environment and public safety areas and also recruited more than 4,000 volunteers who donated their time.

The Community Foundation of the Ozarks

A date for the 2009 Youth Philanthropy Conference has been set. The event will take place on Thursday, October 15, 2009. For the second year in a row, the event will take place on the Drury University campus in Springfield.

Further details will be forthcoming. Please mark your calendars and plan on attending! Last year we hosted over 200 students and sponsors from 31 schools in the Ozarks region. This conference is a great opportunity for students and sponsors to share ideas and thoughts on creating, sustaining, and strengthening youth empowerment projects. Read about last year’s Youth Philanthropy Conference.

Love Elementary is known for educating students in pre-kindergarten through fourth grade, but what isn't as widely known is the school also houses a small group of adult learners throughout the school year.

The Parents and Children Together program, a partnership between Jamestown Public Schools and the Jamestown Community Learning Council, provides parents an opportunity to attend school alongside their pre-kindergarten children. In the process, the parents receive adult education, strengthened parenting skills and other opportunities - while at the same time acting as a model for their young children to show them education is something to take seriously.

''The parents in the program have done a really good job this year,'' Debbie Yahn, PACT parent coordinator, said. ''They've been very committed to the program, and they've shown their children that they value education by coming here.''

COMMUNITY SUPPORT THROUGH FUNDING

The list of local foundations supporting the PACT program at Love School includes the Chautauqua Region Community Foundation, the Darrah Foundation, the Holmberg Foundation, the Johnson Foundation, the Lenna Foundation and the Sheldon Foundation. Funding also comes from the AM and PM Rotary Clubs and First Presbyterian Church.