Kellogg Foundation Launches $75 Million Initiative to Address Effects of Racism

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has announced the launch of a five-year, $75 million initiative to improve life outcomes for vulnerable children and their families by promoting racial healing and eliminating barriers to opportunities.

During the first phase of the America Healing initiative, more than a hundred community-based organizations will receive grants totaling more than $14.6 million to support healing efforts among racial and ethnic groups that address historic burdens, disparities, and barriers to opportunity. Representing twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia and several different racial and ethnic population groups, the grantees will work to increase opportunities for children in education, health, and economic areas. Additional phases of the initiative will aim to curtail racism in the media, the environment, education, housing, and the health and criminal justice systems, with an emphasis on expanding opportunities for all children.

Children of color are over-represented among the twenty-nine million low-income children and families in the U.S., particularly among families living in concentrated poverty. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, about 58 percent of children with immigrant parents and 61 percent of African-American, 62 percent of Latino, 57 percent of Native-American, and 30 percent of Asian-American children live in low-income families, compared to 26 percent of white children.

"The Kellogg Foundation's vision is for a nation to marshal its resources to ensure that all children in America have an equitable and promising future," said Kellogg Foundation president and CEO Sterling K. Speirn. "That is simply not the case in many communities across the country today. The goal of the America Healing initiative is to help make that vision a reality by engaging communities and supporting them in the hard work of racial healing and addressing the effects of historic and contemporary structural issues, such as residential segregation and concentrated poverty."

“W.K. Kellogg Foundation Announces $75 Million Effort to Tackle Structural Racism and Promote Racial Healing.” W.K. Kellogg Foundation Press Release 5/11/10.