Proposals in the connect category

826LA

Changing the Story: Connecting Los Angeles Communities Through Volunteering

826LA will inspire Los Angeles residents to support local students by volunteering. 826LA will develop outreach strategies to recruit new volunteers, with a focus on volunteers-of-color and older volunteers. 826LA will create relevant trainings for volunteers to complete online and in our centers. These steps will help 826LA grow its volunteer program, with a focus on ensuring all our spaces remain safe and supportive for students.

Altadena Library District

Curiosity Connection: Altadena Library on Wheels

The grant will support the implementation of a brand new outreach initiative and development of a Mobile Library (van) equipped with books, technological learning tools, and community support resources that will be used to engage the community, especially underserved groups in Altadena, at community events, local schools, and locations of commerce in the San Gabriel Valley.

Arts Bridging the Gap

100 Murals for Peace

100 Murals for Peace will bring a county-wide, united, colorful message of peace to the world from the youth and communities of Los Angeles. 100 unique art pieces designed by students and young artists will be selected from a county-wide contest. On September 11-13, 2020 thousands of volunteers from community groups, schools, workplaces, veterans organizations, and more will paint their adopted mural on one of 100 walls across the city, spreading peace, joy and togetherness through this collective creative action.

Boyle Heights Beat/Radio Pulso

Voices/Voces

Voices is a story-sharing project with audio and photography elements which will encourage youth to engage with elders. The project will help raise awareness around issues in their neighborhood, while building and strengthening intergenerational social networks. At the most basic level, storytelling is a way of keeping a family’s or a community’s stories alive. Interview topics can be tailored to address specific themes or community issues. Stories will be collected and archived as a means to create further dialogues and grow networks

connect Finalist

BREATHE California of Los Angeles County

Blue Sky LA

Angelenos are tired of breathing in the worst air in the nation. Blue Sky LA is an air quality improvement program fueled by volunteer projects that result in cleaner air for our County by the 2028 Olympics. Leading residents CONNECT through monthly volunteer opportunities, tracking the number of people participating in each event, and quantifying reductions in harmful emissions, Blue Sky LA will engage residents, promote collaboration, and establish LA County as the global leader in reducing air pollution so Angelenos may breathe easier.

Build A Better World Foundation

Build A Better World Foundation Concert

To Sponsor a Charitable Concert featuring Music Professionals, Youth Music Professionals and Community and Spiritual Leaders all to Unite to raise awareness and funds for other non~profits, as well as other urgent needs, etc.

Camp Lost Boys

Healing Masculinity

We have been offering retreats and immersive experiences for men of transgender experience for the past two years. We would like to shift into also creating this offering for transgender and cisgender men, with the aim of creating shared brotherhood and learning to become better men together.

Center for Council, a project of Community Partners

Circle Up Los Angeles (C-U-LA)

“Circle Up Los Angeles” invites Angelenos to experience the care, regard and presence of community. Weekly in-person and virtual Councils will be hosted in a diverse cross-section of LA communities, providing the opportunity to gather and connect with myriad non-profit professionals, police officers, healthcare workers and system-impacted and formerly incarcerated individuals served by us and our partner-organizations. C-U-LA will open hearts and give voice to stories of all Angelenos, creating community through celebrating our shared journey.

Changeist

Changeist: Young people engaging in community

We immerse young people in a 6-month civic action experience, exploring the social justice issues they care most about. Over the next year, we will bring on 15 AmeriCorps members to engage 300 youth across Los Angeles, giving them space on Saturdays to talk about and address our most pressing issues, creating pathways for them to design and nurture a more just society.

Citizens Of Culture

Community Practice

The funds from LA2050 will support Community Practice, a donation based social emotional learning and mental health program. It includes weekly community engagements, webinars and online training, and publishes social-emotional learning resources. This art-based program serves to combat loneliness and create emotional literacy in a city that can feel isolated and disconnected, exacerbating the problems of bias, and mental health issues. Some topics we address are grief,emotional management, and conflict management.

Civy, Inc.

Civy - Civic Engagement Platform

Our project is to improve civic engagement in LA County. By implementing our platform the LA government can efficiently share civic projects among its residents, and residents can provide feedback in confidence or vote on the projects thereby empowering the engagement of the diverse population of LA. Our platform also fosters education for residents and enable them to make informed feedback. Our platform is simple to use and very mobile. Civy's platform link https://www.civy.co

Climate Resolve

One Day

Climate Resolve’s One Day campaign will encourage Angelenos to get out of their cars one day per week and either bike or walk or take public transportation to get where they’re going. The One Day campaign would not only reduce traffic, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, but, most importantly, would also show elected leaders that the public supports modes of transportation other than the automobile.

Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)

Immigrants Empowered = Lives Saved

The Covid-19 crisis has exposed what we have known for decades: millions of immigrants and mixed-status families are among the most vulnerable in our community. Although they are essential workers that continue to work in our ICUs, drive delivery trucks, and feed us from the farm fields, they are left behind in this emergency. CHIRLA needs support to be a life line for immigrants in this crisis. An LA2050 grant would allow us to advocate for the needs of 1 in 4 Angelinos while informing and legally protecting them.

Conscious Kids Project

Conscious Connections

Our project goal is to develop engaging, innovative strategies for teaching yoga to special education students that supports not only their physical health, but also their social and emotional well-being. This project will research, implement, assess, and design yoga curriculum aimed at meeting the needs of these students and support their movement towards their unique learning goals. We aim to reach 100 special education students in Los Angeles area public schools to deliver weekly yoga classes throughout the 2020/2021 school year.

Creative Acts

Art Attacks

Creative Acts’ Art Attacks program teaches incarcerated young people the value of their voice and the importance of participating in civic engagement through voting, and connecting with and finding leadership roles in organizations that are affecting change in their communities. We use community drawn art, spoken word poetry and other artistic endeavors to engage and inspire incarcerated youth to change their narratives about who they are and the impact they have. Our pilot program showed an 86% rise in voting for participants and facilitated deep connections between our incarcerated youth and the organization March for Our Lives.

connect Finalist

Creative Healing for Youth in Pain

chyp's PhotoVoice

chyp’s PhotoVoice for youth living with chronic pain and their parents is a pilot program. Participants take photos to illustrate their experience with persistent pain and coping. The project empowers participants to document their lives using cameras, fostering individual and community change through social connections. Documenting a chronic health condition with photography, with the added benefit of peer support online, can highlight areas of health disparities and provide feelings of connectedness in an otherwise isolating journey.

Dressember

Building a Legion of Advocates

We are at a critical juncture in our history; having grown tremendously in our first 7 years from annually raising $165K in 2013 to raising $2.5 million in 2019—cumulatively, this campaign has raised over $10 million to fund anti-trafficking work. With a peer-to-peer fundraising model, word of mouth has been our primary channel for awareness. We are focused on growing our community in LA where we are headquartered, to achieve greater impact by developing a comprehensive outreach strategy that extends beyond word of mouth.

ethosDNA

Halt Smart Parking System

We are seeking resources to complete our operating system called haltOS- the future operating system for a smart connected city. Since Halt is a company focused on necessity -based innovation rather that aspirational-based innovation; our meter's run on a completely redesigned & dynamic operating system.

EveryoneOn

Connected & Empowered Communities (CEC)

CEC is a virtual digital skills training program for low-income adults and seniors. Facilitated by community college students, the virtual training program will ensure participants develop the digital literacy skills required to access critical services, employment opportunities, and educational resources found online. This program will also equip participants with affordable internet service and computers to ensure a robust learning experience. A virtual and multi-generational program will create new opportunities to connect, learn, and grow

Facing History and Ourselves

Facing History LA

With LA2050 funds, Facing History will support over 9,000 Los Angeles teachers with timely professional development opportunities, tools and resources for guiding student inquiry into difficult issues and current events, from gun violence to hate crimes to ICE raids. As needed, we will help teachers pivot to distance learning strategies so they can keep students engaged and connected for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis. Together, teachers and Facing History will create a strong cohort of informed, compassionate, civically-engaged LA youth.

Free Arts

Free Arts for Abused or At-Risk Children

The award would be used to support four core programs—Free Arts Court Program, Free Arts Mentoring, Free Arts for Families and Free Arts Days—free of charge. Each year, Free Arts serves nearly 22,000 children ages 4-18 with the support of over 200 volunteer mentors who donate 14,000 hours. Free Arts works with an art therapist, licensed child psychologist and licensed clinical social worker to create curricula that help children develop mastery, recognize, understand and express their feelings, and cope with the realities of their situation.

Friendship Foundation

Friendship Clubs: Building Community for ALL Children

Friendship Clubs are school-sanctioned clubs located in 40 high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools throughout the South Bay, where children with special needs are paired with their peers in general education once or twice each week to eat lunch, socialize, play games, and attend school events as a group--an event full of fun, peer interaction.

Good Trouble Makers

In Progress

Expand In Progress, to become LA's premiere social and concert dance and movement program centering queer, BIPOC and disabled communities and artists.

Heidi Duckler Dance

Los Angeles Street

This grant will support an artistic residency that will transform currently vacant properties in the LA Fashion District into shared community assets. The HDD dancemobile (a yellow convertible mustang) will move with artists between 7th and 12th streets on Los Angeles Blvd, establishing a pop-up performance venue and discovery space for exhibits, performances, workshops, and other activities curated by HDD, with participation by a diverse mixture of community stakeholders.

human-I-T

#include

human-I-T provides low-income individuals & nonprofits with technology, internet, and digital literacy training. We collect used electronics from companies to refurbish and more people are provided with computers/laptops and the skills needed to use the technology effectively. We will provide Angelenos with the means to learn how to use the internet through digital literacy courses, provide them with a laptop and support in getting low-cost internet.

Inclusion Matters By Shane's Inspiration

Connect LA Families!

Connect LA Families will give children with disabilities and their families, a historically vulnerable population, access to the vital social/emotional benefits of community connection. Your investment will provide inclusion grants to 5 community-based organizations in low-income LA neighborhoods who will implement inclusion programming at their local inclusive playgrounds. Inclusion Matters will provide training, online resources, and deliver our education program to surrounding schools, thus deepening their social inclusion network.

Indigenous Circle of Wellness So'oh Shinálí Sister Project

MatriArt: Heart of the Land and People

So’oh-Shinálí Sister Project will host two large events titled, MatriArt: Heart of the Land and People to celebrate tribal culture, diversity, and resilience through visual and performing arts. SSSP will collaborate with Indigenous community-based organizations to identify local artists, create an immersive community experience and make the Los Angeles Indigenous community visible. Art forms include basketry, beading, dance, music, pottery and a mobile mural. SSSP will also develop a toolkit on hosting Indigenous community-focused arts events.

InsightLA

Insight in Action

InsightLA is requesting support of its Insight in Action (IIA) program, which offers meditation teachings and community-building activities to vulnerable and marginalized populations and to healthcare workers and caregivers responding to suffering. This year, IIA will continue to work with existing partner organizations and expand programming for individuals and organizations recovering from the effects of Covid-19 whether because of illness, loss, economic instability, or vicarious trauma experienced in the line of duty.

Inspiring Service

LA COVID-19 Assessment and Response System (CARES)

The COVID-19 pandemic, trite now to be calling it a disaster of historic proportions, is different in yet another way. Typically, when disasters occur, thousands of volunteers descend to relieve the pain. Not this time. But there is hope. And because of our work, people are not helpless. Using innovative technology tools, we've turned our volunteer ecosystem-building platforms into an assessment, response and recovery tool for the entire Los Angeles social sector. In a single site in real time, Los Angeles will know who, where and how to help.

International Eye LA

Leimert Park Village Festival Series

Leimert Park Village celebrates more African derived festival traditions than maybe any other community in the region. Mostly self-financed, these festivals have contributed to the vitality and reputation of Leimert Park as a resilient center of Black art and culture. This grant will curate an international festival series, and produce Los Angeles Carnival as the Series highlight. The Leimert Park Festival Series will be marketed to help brand Leimert Park as the destination of choice for art and culture from the African Diaspora.

Investing in Place a Project of Community Partners

Whose Streets? Our Streets!

We are 5 organizations that want to bring transportation and housing advocates together to create a new mobility movement that prioritizes equity, climate change, and the need to make walking and biking safer, improve buses, and to make it possible for low-income people to live near high quality transit. We will expand our movement with a series of coordinated and inclusive events to address our common and most pressing issues—ranging from bikeable and walkable streets to affordable housing near transit, and from open streets to better buses.

Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles

Teen Talk

Teen Talk is a free mobile app for teens to seek social and emotional support anonymously from trained teen advisors. Teen Talk supports 26,000 registered app users worldwide and each month approximately 1,500 new users download the app. JBBBSLA trains Los Angeles-area teens to become advisors for the app. Teen advisors complete a 50-hour in-person training that teaches empathetic listening and communication techniques. This grant will enable Teen Talk to train more teen advisors to serve growing numbers of app users.

Kid City Hope Place

A New LA Story

In a divided country and a diverse and fragmented city, how can young adults deepen connections among marginalized and silo’d communities to create a new LA Story? In this project, young leaders facilitate story circles in collaboration with the Museum of Social Justice. Story circles connect the lived experience of artists, elders, and museum visitors to upcoming exhibits that explore human trafficking in Los Angeles; comfort women in the Korean War, and Salvadoran needlework that chronicles the war in Central America.

Korean American Family Services

Share Your Heart, Share Your Home

1) Expand community outreach and the recruitment of Asian Pacific Islander (API) resource (foster) parents into LA County: Resource Parent Info Sessions and Orientations in API languages 2) Provide ongoing support groups for API resource parents with foster children 3) Provide emergency needs for API foster youth and their families, such as school supplies, clothing, food, utilities and other basic supplies

L.A. Works

L.A. Works Take Action Initiative

L.A. Works Take Action Initiative empowers volunteers to tackle major issues facing L.A.: Homelessness, Climate Change, and Equity in Education. At monthly bootcamps, volunteers first hear from our nonprofit collaborators who provide background and framing of the issues; get trained by an L.A. Works project leader in grassroots advocacy tactics; then conduct a hands-on action like making phone bank calls, presenting a two-minute support or opposition speech, or going live with a social media campaign.

LA Forward

The LA 101 Guide to Local Government and Civic Engagement

LA 101 is an interactive guide and campaign to help you understand how local government really works, and how you can make a difference with your friends and neighbors. It will cover major local elected and appointed officials and what they do, city and county departments and how they impact your life, the fundamentals of advocacy and organizing, and more. Our goal is for every Angeleno to have the knowledge, tools, and confidence they need to become active in their communities and advocate for an LA that is fair and flourishing for everyone.

connect Finalist

LASTing Impressions Center

The Art Can Save Lives

To bring awareness to the healing and recovery that can happen when individuals affected by violence and abuse are provided with access to nontraditional therapy forms to include art, music, writing, and dance. To help transform lives through creative movement, to break the stigmas associated with being a victim of circumstance. We plan to do this through street art programs, music awareness concerts and other creative ventures that could lead to a sustainable income after healing.

LiteraTea

Using Stories to Create Community for Under-resourced Groups

To realize our mission of enriching the lives of underserved Angelenos, especially seniors, recent immigrants and the homebound, we need to directly reach and receive the endorsement of decision makers at relevant organizations. Financial support will also help fund tailored programs for these groups, including specific courses, ancillary content and instructional videos. Finally, to sustain the program after the project period, we will train staff and volunteers in technological and programmatic elements so they can operate independently.

Living Through Giving Foundation

#Hashtag Lunchbag across Los Angeles

Hashtag Lunchbag is seeking support in order to grow the movement across Los Angeles, helping to increase the number of meals provided, in neighborhoods across the city, building a greater awareness among a diverse group of volunteers, with a more extended geographical outreach.

Mighty Companions

Making L.A. a Friendlier City

Instead of people being on devices while waiting for a movie to start, on line in a market, or drinking coffee at Starbucks, it will get people connecting with each other, person to person. This project will create a wave of friendliness washing over the city, enhancing the attraction of L.A. as a place to visit and to live. Making L.A. a Friendlier City will burst into reality when we are out of lockdown, helping us come together as one city let alone as one humanity.

Miry's List

Welcome, Neighbor 2020

Building welcoming connections between Angelenos and their resettling neighbors has an essential and transformative impact on our community. Building off our initial success, Welcome, Neighbor 2020 provides Angelenos with interactive opportunities to learn about refugee resettlement in our city. Participants have opportunities to connect with new arrival families, volunteer virtually and in-person, and develop personal connections as neighbors.

National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP)

Emerging Content Creators Inclusion Initiative (ECCII)

NALIP’s Emerging Content Creators Inclusion Initiative & Workshops are geared towards emerging artists from underrepresented communities who lack the resources and relationships to kickstart their careers in the entertainment industry. NALIP aims to facilitate the Emerging Content Creators Workshops year-round, activating NALIP’s members, supporters, and partners to participate, mentor, and provide participants with valuable knowledge, resources and an accessible point of entry into the entertainment ecosystem.

Neighborhood Music School

Neighborhood Music School Community Performance Series

With the support of the LA2050 Grant Challenge, the Neighborhood Music School Community Performance Series will provide the underserved neighborhoods of eastern Los Angeles with equitable access to free, high quality, public performances. The performances will serve as a connection point for our students and neighbors, resulting in increased social capital spheres and reinforcement of the community driven arts ecosystem of Boyle Heights.

New Horizons: Serving Individuals with Special Needs

Bold Futures through New Horizons

The My LA2050 grant will support New Horizons’ efforts to provide increased opportunities and options for individuals with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities to participate in and connect with the community, through volunteerism, employment, social interaction and meaningful involvement. We will develop a coordinated transportation system to more efficiently utilize agency vehicles, public transportation, and other mobility options to facilitate greater access to and participation in the community.

Novelly

Novelly Leadership Academy

We released Novelly, our mobile reading app that doubles as civics education for 8th-10th grade students. We use relatable and engaging young adult (YA) fiction as the foundation for civic discussion with youth on social issues. We're expanding the Novelly Leadership Academy, an online 8-week training for students who want to conduct workshops with their peers using the Novelly app in their schools and communities. In the 2020-2021 academic year, we will train 100 high school students who will reach 2,000 youth across Los Angeles County.

OneJustice

Los Angeles Asylum Legal Clinic and Resource Fairs Collaborative

In 2019, we piloted the Asylum Legal Clinic & Resource Fairs with legal services organizations, pro bono attorneys, students & volunteer social workers. Through this collaboration we’ve served 80+ asylum seekers with Know Your Rights info, legal counsel & connection to critical social services. We aim to expand by providing assistance to a larger number of people & families seeking asylum. By building on the work of our partners & volunteers, we’ll connect more asylum seekers to vital resources to help them navigate and succeed in this country.

PLUS ME Project

Our Stories Matter: Empowering LA To Connect Through Storytelling

PLUS ME Project will empower LA by providing the opportunity to CONNECT through the art of storytelling. Our team will recruit diverse adult volunteers and coordinate classroom visits throughout LA for them to share their stories with middle and high school students. We will host monthly story building training sessions for our volunteers and organize quarterly storytelling mixers where volunteers, students, and the public will have the opportunity to interact, inspire, and listen to each other's stories.

Ready to Succeed

Creating Connection & Community for Youth in Foster Care

A grant will ensure that youth aging out of foster care have a robust community of connection and support, particularly amidst our current health crisis, which makes them more vulnerable than ever. Since 2016, RTS has specialized in connecting these youth to the people and networks they need to advance in the modern workplace. As these youth now face unprecedented uncertainty, funding will allow us to combine forces with an aligned partner to provide the extra, dedicated social and emotional support that they will require during the next year.

connect Finalist

resisterhoodLA

Quarterly Hygiene Kit Builds Events to benefit our Unhoused Neighbors

Our FLOWVEMBER hygiene kit build is easily our most impactful AND popular annual event. Our plan is to do this event quarterly, building 1000 hygiene kits at each event to be distributed by our community partners: SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, KTown for All, The Center in Hollywood. We're moving to a larger, ADA-accessible space, where we can host tabling for non-profit partners, encourage connection and community among volunteers, and invite speakers with lived experience to share their stories.

SameSide Inc

SameSide: Empower Events for Social Impact

SameSide has built a web-based events platform powering social impact gatherings that are live or virtual. We want to make Los Angeles the most civically engaged city in America by making it as easy as possible to incorporate information and calls to action for causes into the activities and gatherings already happening every day.

Shared_Studios (LA_Portal)

Social Distancing Together: Reflecting on life under COVID-19 and imagining a more vibrant and resilient LA

Housed in a gold shipping container equipped with A/V technology, the LA_Portal is a pop-up community space for Angelenos to come together, share their experiences with COVID-19, and explore ways to create a more vibrant and resilient city. The LA_Portal will move between neighborhoods, hosting dialogues and cultural programming with 45+ Portal sites around the world. It is free, open to the public, and co-created with LA arts and civic partners. Dialogues will be recorded to track impact, inspire other cities, and capture this moment in time.

Skirball Cultural Center

Skirball Puppet Festival

The Skirball Puppet Festival is a daylong profusion of puppet theater serving over 2000 participants from Greater Los Angeles. Interactive performances, roaming marionettes and pageant puppets, live music, and puppet-making workshops take place across the Skirball’s indoor and outdoor stages and courtyards. Skirball Puppet Festival engages multiple generations with puppetry arts and immersive storytelling, while sharing immigrant stories and the value of caring for one another—a welcome celebration following the virus-imposed isolation.

Social Cipher

Ava: A video game about space pirates and social situations

Our premier game series, Ava, is a space pirate-themed adventure game that breaks down social interactions through interactive dialogue and emotional systems, encourages self-advocacy, and reminds autistic youth that they belong with characters that represent and understand them. With the help of the MyLA2050 Grants Challenge, we'll be able to finish developing Ava and run subsidized pilots of our game with schools and autism service providers in the Greater LA area who need it most.

Southern California Curling Center

Connect With Curling

Curling is an 8 to 80 sport that fosters social connections, social mixing, competitive outlets, and activity that is eminently adaptable for athletes and participants of all skills and abilities. The program aims to bring together various community groups to share the tenants of curling (sportsmanship, teamwork, practice, camaraderie) through team building and fundraising activities for the organizations. These sessions will occur throughout the year and culminate in a tournament where they come together to compete and mix with each other.

Special Olympics Southern California

Build Acceptance & Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in LAUSD via Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools®

Build acceptance and inclusion of persons with disabilities in LAUSD via Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools® (UCS) which includes: Unified Sports - Students with and without intellectual disabilities develop athletic skills while forming friendships, fostering respect for each other, and becoming leaders; Inclusive Youth Leadership - Students of all abilities become agents of change within their school, community, and state; and Whole School Engagement – Entire school communities engage to create a socially inclusive school climate.

Startups in the Sky

InTECHrity Conference (powered by Startups in the Sky)

The Startups in the Sky team seeks funding to pull together an organizing team that will designing, curate, and produce a world class conference focused on building a more inclusive digital future. With so much attention paid to the law breakers in the tech space, the need to lift up those most heavily focused on improving digital transparency, data security, and individual protections online has never been greater, in order to set the stage for a safer, more inclusive/accessible, and equitable digital landscape.

Students Run LA

#FutureVoters: Students' Next Finish Line

The Civics Center (TCC) and Students Run LA (SRLA) will increase voter awareness, registration, and turnout in LA County by leveraging their networks, volunteers, expertise, and resources to expand outreach to highschool students, their teachers and families in predominantly underrepresented Latinx communities. TCC will work with SRLA to create student-led voter registration (VR) drives at SRLA races and SRLA high schools in majority Latinx and other diverse communities to promote civic volunteerism, responsibility and democratic participation.

The Foundation for Living Beauty

Virtual programming

TFLB cares about each individual woman,and applies our wrap-around approach to helping women regain their sense of femininity, self-worth, beauty and emotional stability after coping with the taxing effects of cancer and chemotherapy. Our virtual programming project will support our efforts in being able to serve and reach out to more women with cancer, collaborate with all agencies that serve these women, and begin offering them our services, especially women who cannot be in public due to recent chemotherapy or current immune deficiencies.

The Giving Spirit

LA Homeless Outreach

Funding/support for the costs of our essential aid kits (50%). Our kits contain food, hygiene items, weather protection, toiletries, socks, and more. Funding/support for increased capacity costs for additional event space and storage (25%). We need a second location to increase capacity for aid and volunteer participation. Funding/support for our educational program for production of videos, including moderated panel discussions on pertinent homeless topics/concerns and about formerly homeless telling their stories (25%).

The Music Center

The Music Center’s Dance DTLA

Following COVID-19, The Music Center will relaunch its programming through Dance DTLA, a series of diverse dance engagements featuring live music, DJ sets, and dance instruction. Beginning with virtual dance parties and dance instruction, by mid-summer Dance DTLA will transition to our Plaza where Angelenos can participate in-person or virtually. These engagements will help our communities recover from social isolation by providing Angelenos from all demographic, economic and social backgrounds outlets for connection, expression, and exchange.

Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore

Indigenous In Us: Embracing Ancestral Knowledge and Sharing the Beauty of Practice

The Indigenous in Us: Embracing Ancestral Knowledge and Sharing the Beauty of Practice, showcases community-based indigenous wellbeing practices of Native Mexica groups (with links to Nahuatl-speaking indigenous ancestors from central Mexico) and our local Native American Tataviam nation group, whose combined teachings connect the Northeast San Fernando Valley to the past and present United States, Mexico, and Central America. Over a 12-months, a series of free public cultural events will focus on ancestral knowledge/arts for social well being.

Trauma Informed LA (TILA)

Our Stories Matter: Connecting Los Angeles through Stories of Healing

TILA seeks support to produce Season 2 of its podcast, Our Stories Matter, a narrative-building project centering the lived experiences of activists and healers. This project will include additional in-person and virtual initiatives that can be easily adapted if social distancing continues. These include community events, live podcast taping and storytelling slam competition; podcast storyteller-led workshops on healing and artistic practices; and educational webinars on trauma, healing-centered care, and resilience-building practices.

Union Rescue Mission

Every Child & Family Off the Streets

This project will connect families experiencing homelessness to housing and will inspire Angelenos to help get every family off the streets of Los Angeles. Activities will connect families to housing and services. It will aim to encourage Angelenos to volunteer and become active participants in the fight to end homelessness. We believe that together we can transform lives and help make LA the best place to connect, live, and raise a family.

Union Station Homeless Services

Union Station Homeless Services Community Allies Program

The Community Allies Program was launched in response to the isolation and loneliness reported by families and individuals we served as they settled into their new homes. The program seeks to increase housing retention rates, improve community connection, and foster community integration of currently homeless families and individuals in bridge-housing and those that are formerly homeless in permanent supportive housing by providing social and recreational activities and pairing individuals with a supportive community volunteer ally.

connect Finalist

Venice Family Clinic

West L.A. Votes! — A Civic Engagement Initiative

Venice Family Clinic will mobilize Angelenos across West L.A. to make their voices heard through a non-partisan outreach initiative that will make politics, politicians, and the polls more accessible. Through West L.A. Votes! we will launch a government education campaign, train volunteers to connect residents to voting resources, and bridge the gap between voters and local officials by promoting dialogue in community settings. We believe that increasing civic engagement among the families we serve is critical to driving health equity.

Voices Beyond Assault

Beauty of Survival Project- Empowering Survivors of Sexual Assault

Voices Beyond Assault would like the support in providing resources and a safe space for survivors of sexual assault. We want to create an environment where survivors can unwind from stress, fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and any other ailments that effect them due to sexual trauma. A space of peace and calm, that increases their self-esteem, self confidence while they are healing. We are also excited to have the support to create programs and events that assist in thriving. We also request support of our one of a kind survival retreats.

Walk With Sally

Help Support Children Impacted by Cancer

Today, 5 million children in the United States are living with a parent who is battling or has survived cancer. The National Cancer Institute estimates 1 in 4 cancer patients are parents of a child under the age of 18. In order to help more of these children and families in LA County, Walk With Sally is asking for a $50,000 grant from LA2050 to expand its reach and impact through a satellite office in DTLA. From here we will recruit 60 more volunteers from DTLA, East LA as well as Glendale and Pasadena to support these children and families.