Since 1983, the Ed Fund has awarded grants to support West Contra Costa County public schools. With our origins in grantmaking, we have recently been honored with the Outstanding Foundation Award by the Association of Philanthropy Professionals-Golden Gate Chapter. We are proud of our record of grantmaking, demonstrating our civic and charitable responsibility.
Meeting Crisis with Creativity
We recognize that this is an uncertain time. Here at the Ed Fund, like so many others, we are trying to do what we can to help. We have focused our effort externally to establish the WCCUSD Covid-19 Rapid Relief Fund for our school community. Internally, we have been working to shepherd our partners and programs through this crisis. As many other funders have done, we have been working with our Ed Fund Arts grants recipients to rework their project, deliverables and timelines to best meet the needs of our students during these unprecedented times.
Teachers have contacted us asking to roll funds over to next year or asked if we can help connect them to Arts curriculum and resources. One teacher, Gulya Barclay from Dover Elementary School, asked if she could switch the use of her grant funds from creating fence tiles to purchasing a new tablet to better deliver “distance learning” with her class, specifically for her Arts curriculum. We agreed and we are so pleased with the outcome!
Gulya is in the middle of the unit about “Theme”, and is creating a collage of students’ pictures holding their thematic posters: “We are in it together”, “Together we are strong”, “Education is the way”, “Never stop learning”, “Stay strong”, “Every kind act counts”, “We miss Dover” and more. Students are taking their pictures with their posters and posting them as one of their assignments. On her tablet, Gulya is using a special art/photo program to create a collage with rainbow gradient. She is sending the collage to the whole Dover community through Class dojo. This means that other teachers will be involved in getting their students’ pictures as well. When they go back to school, Gulya is planning to display the collages on their school’s entrance wall as a reminder/memory of the 2019-2020 school year.
We thank Gulya and our other grant recipients for their flexibility and creativity to meet this challenge and continue to deliver amazing Arts experiences for our students.
If you are a grant recipient and you would like to make changes to your project proposal or defer funding to next year please contact info@edfundwest.org.
KENNEDY HIGH SCHOOL FUNDING
Kennedy High School Teachers funding to support field trips and other learning experiences is temporarily suspended due to COVIID-19.
