East Bay Community Foundation Gives $500,000 for Jobs PDF Print E-mail
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Following Study, Grants Target "Underemployed"

Oakland, CA, June 14, 2010 --  Citing the region’s need for better economic health, the East Bay Community Foundation is granting a half-million dollars to programs helping people learn new job skills, acquire jobs, protect and build their financial assets and create their own small businesses.

“In this time of unemployment crisis, a job that pays a sustainable wage is the key to economic stability,” said Nicole Taylor, the Foundation’s President and Chief Executive Officer.     

The grants will go to 26 non-profit organizations in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, some of which provide services aimed at the chronically underemployed: those re-entering communities after incarceration, those with limited skills and work histories, those emerging from the foster care system, and those from other disadvantaged communities who face multiple barriers to employment.

The grants follow a 70-page study the Foundation published last September, Putting the East Bay to Work – Sustainable Jobs for the Underemployed and are part of the Foundation’s two-pronged strategy adopted in 2008 to advance economic opportunity for those in need and to ensure young children are successful in the education system so they have economic opportunity when they become adults.

Since adopting the strategy, the Foundation and its donors have granted $3.5 million for these two causes.

“While double-digit unemployment is rampant throughout the general population, our study showed that joblessness is far worse and far more long-term among those in the East Bay who traditionally face barriers to employment,” said Taylor. “These grants are aimed at improving the economic lives of those people -- people who are in dire need of a chance.”

Grants from the Foundation supported:

* Organizations involved in the successful transition to work for individuals reentering communities after incarceration, those with limited skills and work histories, and emancipated foster youth who face multiple barriers to employment.


* Organizations working to increase access to living-wage employment through training for high-demand occupations.


* Organizations working to enhance low-wage workers’ economic self-sufficiency.


* Organizations helping low-income individuals and families build and protect financial assets.


* Organizations using microenterprise as an income- and asset-building option for individuals who have traditionally been excluded from economic opportunities.


“These grants are part of our continuing work to harness together political and intellectual leadership, financial capital, and philanthropic expertise to change the lives of individuals, families, and communities in the East Bay,” said Taylor.