Community Action Grant Recipients

2011–12 Summary
One-year grants: 10
Two-year grants: 17
Total grants: 27
Eligible applicants: 8
Total awards: $225,000

Community Action Grants provide seed money to women, AAUW branches, AAUW state organizations, and local community-based nonprofit organizations for innovative programs or nondegree research projects that promote education and equity for women and girls. Recipients must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

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Since the inauguration of the Research & Projects Fund in 1972, AAUW has provided support to hundreds of communities around the United States to advance education and equity for women and girls. Early projects focused on public interest issues, including women's struggles to balance home and work life, the establishment of women's resource centers on college campuses, and the emergence of women's political involvement in the antinuclear movement.

As the program evolved and grew, AAUW explored ways to strengthen support for community-based programs that further its mission. Projects have become increasingly collaborative and girl-focused, bringing together AAUW branches and local community groups. In 2006, AAUW supported the Girls Excelling in Math and Science (GEMS) program, a partnership between the AAUW College Park MD Branch and the University of Maryland which focuses on hands-on science exploration and mentoring for D.C. area middle-school girls. Thanks to a Community Action Grant in 1997, Jill Pfeiffer and Ly Nguyen were able to found Oasis for Girls, an outreach program for girls that continues to thrive. Pittsburgh Strong Women, Strong Girls, started by 2006 Community Action Grant recipients Lindsay Hyde and Joanna Dickert, continues to provide after-school programming and mentorship to girls in elementary school. And Let’s Read Math, a project funded in 2005 that works with AAUW branches to partner with local community organizations to offer math skill-building curriculum for young children, continues to grow and thrive.

The 2011 grant recipients are undertaking exciting projects including a task force raising awareness of and addressing prevailing attitudes toward bullying with emphasis on the more recent phenomenon of cyberbullying; a theater program providing health education to high school freshman girls and giving them the opportunity to write skits about and act in a play about health issues; and a week-long residential STEM camp where low-income girls will be introduced to numerous engineering careers, demonstrations of engineering applications and problem-solving projects.

AAUW thanks the following 2011 Community Action Grant panelists: Kathy Kremer (MI), chair, Chandra Alexandre (CA), Christine K. Cavanaugh (PA), Valera Francis (NC), Lili High (FL), Yanghee Kim (UT), Lorraine Messinger (KS), Elizabeth Trejos-Castillo, (TX), Mandy Van Deven (NY), Mary Tyler Browne (NM).