The feature below is brought to you by Blueprint 58, an organization that has received a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here. At Blueprint 58, we do not believe that we are here to create more beauty, but rather to be a spark, with the hope that relationships can encourage and empower the beautiful assets that already reside in the community. Blueprint 58 was founded upon the realization that community development is only truly achieved through lasting mutually transformative relationships. We have seen such beauty in our community through the relationships that have been formed and fostered through Blueprint 58. Especially in these past two years, we have seen these relationships build a community that comes together to care for each other, and that is the true beauty of community; neighbors coming together, across boundaries of race and class and history and culture, to show up for one another. Our ability to strengthen our community comes from a place of trust and familiarity because we prioritize building relationships with our neighbors. This trust provides Blueprint 58 with a unique position to better support and empower our community. Since Blueprint 58’s inception, we have strived to include the voices of our neighbors in all of our decisions. Valuing the voices of our community means that we only develop programs in direct response to community needs. A major concern for many of our neighbors currently is affordable housing. We have heard from many in our community that there is a need for support in maintaining housing, as well as a need for connection to affordable housing. Because of this voiced need, Blueprint 58 developed our new Housing Program. Crises of all types have been shown to negatively affect communities of color and low income communities at a much higher rate than other areas. The affordable housing crisis is no different. By addressing this specific issue in our community, we are advocating for justice for our students and families. For the past few years, our community has experienced much change, with a lot of this change helping to spark economic development and bring business to our neighborhood. However, because of this development, property values and taxes have greatly increased, forcing many neighbors whose families have lived here for decades to move. Our goals for this new Housing Program are to increase housing stability and neighbor retention in the Pittsburgh neighborhood and to provide transitional housing for young adults and support them in finding and maintaining stable housing. We specifically want to focus our Housing Program on keeping neighbors in place while housing costs rise, ensuring that legacy neighbors - along with their children and grandchildren - are offered a chance to benefit from community transformation. In doing so, our hope is to see our neighborhood flourish from the inside. For us at Blueprint 58, justice means that our neighbors who have spent their lives living and loving this community should have the opportunity to stay in the area they call home and continue to be a part of its transformation and development. Our hope is that our neighbors who have known the beauty of our neighborhood in the past can be a part of the beauty of the future. Submitted by: Madi Hellsten
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Here is a small letter that was written by one of our families who is benefiting from the daily meals and food boxes. “I want to start by saying thank you for everything you and the rest of the staff do to help everyone. The meals you bring are always great and the time it takes to prepare them is very appreciated, and thank you for always including a little treat, my boys enjoy it. Mostly I wanted to say how awesome you guys are with the food boxes every week it helps us so much it saves us from getting on the bus and hauling everything back and my youngest son is especially happy for the mac and cheese, just wanted to express this and so you do know that everything you all do is very much appreciated.” Thank you to the See Beautiful Program for continuing to believe in the daily work done at Lantern House. |
Submitted by: Lauren Navidomskis
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.
We (Asia Brown and Abby Stolz), two coworkers and the cofounders of Read and Right, both felt committed to doing our part in the fight against racism. In our efforts and personal research, we both felt strongly that racism was a learned act. As we continued these conversations with each other, it was evident there was a lack of diverse representation of the books we read as children. These younger years are developmentally crucial for racial awareness. White children need to see diverse characters for positive attitudes about race and BIPOC children deserve to be represented in the literature they learn from.
With this in mind, we founded Read and Right, an approved 501(c)(3) organization that strives for racial equality and opportunity within the education system by providing the necessary resources for children to accept and respect all races. Our continued goal is to donate books to elementary schools that encourage these positive conversations about race and feature important Black leaders, pioneers and protagonists. Based out of the Atlanta area, our efforts have started out in the Atlanta Public Schools, serving grades Pk-5.
After our launch in June 2020, we began collecting monetary donations as well as books with diverse characters. We received an outpouring of support from people who shared a similar passion of equal representation and anti-racist attitudes. With the generosity we received, we began to prepare for our first donation at the start of the 2020-21 school year.
With our goals of stretching our reach to different communities, we understand it’s time to grow our exposure. Our Instagram page has been continuously growing and has tremendously helped our efforts in receiving donations, educating and updating the public on our progress. We are ready for the next steps of our journey.
We understand Read and Right’s efforts can seem small in the fight against systemic racism, but the thought of having an impact on children's attitudes about race and representation motivates us. We hope that our once small nonprofit will continue to positively affect the lives of many children to come who will be able to look back and remember the diverse books they were able to have in their classrooms and libraries.
Submitted by: Abby Stolz and Asia Brown
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.
Submitted by: Dr. Cassandra Matthews
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.
In adolescence, children are learning who they are, figuring out what they like, and discovering their skills and interests. Our goal as a foster care agency is to provide safe spaces where the children in our program can just be kids. In the Closet, children find t-shirts with their favorite princesses and superheroes, toys for building and playing pretend, and books whose stories take them to far off lands. The Closet Connection is a place of exploration and self-discovery, where the needs of every beautiful, unique child are met.
The Closet Connection is stocked with donations from the community around us, and we are so grateful that our friends and neighbors see the importance of this resource and give regularly. With this grant from See Beautiful, we have the flexibility to buy new items that our children need but that aren’t often donated. Items like new toothbrushes, cribs, and underwear are necessities for our families, even though they aren’t often in the donations we receive. Funding is essential to fill donation gaps and ensure a positive shopping experience for families and children in our foster care program.
Children entering foster care often come with little to none of their belongings, so we provide them with an entire wardrobe from the Closet, as well as comfort items like knitted blankets and toys. Providing these items allows our foster parents to focus on welcoming children into their home, rather than needing to immediately go out and buy essentials. The transition into foster care can be a busy and stressful time, but we simplify the process by having supplies ready, so our foster families can concentrate on making a good first impression.
We firmly believe there is nothing more beautiful than a safe and happy child, which is why we created a space where children can safely express themselves and their interests. Every time a child smiles, there’s a little bit more beauty in the world. The Closet is a place that inspires smiles and builds confidence, and it is made possible through a community of donors who see this as true. Thank you to See Beautiful for trusting in our mission. We can’t wait to work together spreading beauty through the Closet Connection.
Submitted by: Emily Stone
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.
We’ve been able to serve over 10,000 people and turn neglected neighborhood basketball courts into community centers without walls. These beautiful, safe spaces are open for any and everyone who wants to play. Thank you See Beautiful for believing in us and helping us to promote art worthiness and play equity in places that are often void of both.
Submitted by: A.R. Cooper
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.
Alivia joined AMP when she was 10 years old along with her two younger sisters. She was shy, had natural drive and discipline, and desired a constructive avenue to direct all that energy. Alivia had never played an instrument before, but she was immediately attracted to the sonorous resonance of the double bass. And with that, she started her journey as a music student.
AMP did not require Alivia, or any of its students, to audition or demonstrate any prior musical experience. AMP alleviates obstacles to access to high-quality after-school music education by providing everything necessary — transportation, instruments, teaching artists, lessons (group and private), and multiple opportunities to compete and perform — right in underserved communities, tuition-free. The one requirement for Alivia was to attend all the classes, which took place after school four days per week.
Founded in 2010, the Atlanta Music Project’s mission is to empower underserved youth to realize their possibilities through music. AMP believes that a young person who can perform proficiently on a musical instrument will have developed character traits that are associated with success: the ability to delay gratification, the confidence to execute under pressure, and an optimistic mindset to take on complex tasks and complete them by using a combination of strategy, curiosity, and creativity.
Although AMP is sometimes perceived as a music school, it is not in the business of developing the next virtuoso instrumentalist or chart-topping singer. AMP is in the business of teaching children the importance of the pursuit of excellence. Music is simply the vehicle used to teach this lesson, which our students then apply to their academics and their lives.
Inherently, our society understands the value of music and arts education. Metropolitan Atlanta’s most sought-after public and private schools all have robust music and arts programs, a key indicator of the value of music education in the upbringing of a child. The 2012 study, “The Arts & At-Risk Youth”, by the National Endowment for the Arts found that at-risk youth who had access to intensive arts education were more likely to graduate high school and attend college than at-risk youth who didn’t have access to intensive arts education.
With that said, music education is expensive. For example, a family whose child takes private violin lessons and plays in one of the many youth orchestras in the wealthier parts of Atlanta (north of downtown) will easily pay $3,500 per year to cover the costs of music studies, including participation in one of the dozen of competitive youth orchestras and choirs. South of downtown, there are no competitive youth orchestras and choirs, and the arts education budgets in schools continue to face dramatic budget cuts, resulting in very few strong and stable music education programs.
According to the Brookings Institution Center of Urban & Metropolitan Policy (2016), “the poor in the Atlanta region tend to live in the southern parts of Atlanta and the close-in southern suburbs. The north side of the region has very low poverty rates and almost no areas of concentrated poverty.” They go on, “the City of Atlanta and the close-in southern suburbs are home to most of the working poor and moderate-income families of the Atlanta region.” It is these communities that AMP exclusively serves.
AMP is based in the AMP Center for Performance & Education in southwest Atlanta where the median household income is $28,333 (U.S. Census Bureau), barely over the poverty limit for a family of four. The community where AMP is based is home to Atlanta Public Schools Carver High School cluster, where all schools have a 100% free/reduced lunch rate. Resources and access are limited for students in our underserved communities, with more than 12% living two times below the poverty level and 5% three times below. The families AMP serves do not have $3,500 to spare for the same high-quality music education that the affluent families of Atlanta enjoy.
In Atlanta, the music education ecosystem is tied to socio-economics. As long as this is the case, competitive music education for hundreds of thousands of children is not, and will never be, a reality. The cost to the Atlanta community not engaging the untapped potential of its underserved children through music education - which has proven value - will never be recouped. It is a damaging oversight for the region.
AMP fills this void by providing intensive, tuition-free music education based right in underserved communities. Now in our 12th season, AMP is still the only organization providing such opportunities to underserved communities in southwest Atlanta and we have cultivated a reputation for offering some of the highest quality music education in the city and emerged as one of the leaders of youth development.
Annually AMP serves 300 K-12 students through beginner-level ensembles (After-School Orchestras, Preparatory Choirs), intermediate/advanced ensembles (Youth Orchestras & Choirs), private lessons (AMP Academy), and Summer Series, an annual summer festival and school. AMP classes are led by AMP’s faculty who are paid, local, professional degreed musicians and music educators. Students participate in AMP classes or concerts 1-5 days per week for two hours per day and collectively perform 50+ concerts annually throughout Metro Atlanta. Each ensemble performs both classical repertoire and music of the African Diaspora (Jazz, Spirituals, R&B, Caribbean, etc.), representing the community and youth being served. All AMP concerts are admission-free and open to the public.
Back to Alivia, she shares that “playing the double bass lets me feel a little bit more out of my skin and has given me confidence.” By spending at least eight hours a week at AMP (not including private practice), Alivia found a community where she could invest her energy in an enriching fashion and build a community of lifelong friends. Throughout her 8 years with AMP, Alivia performed alongside R&B singer Monica, Harlem string Quartet, in Mexico City under LA Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and participated in three Georgia All-State Orchestras (statewide ensembles of the most talented young musicians selected by audition), among many other impressive accomplishments and performances.
Alivia is going into her second year at Clayton State University, where she is majoring in Film and minoring in Music. She is also the first recipient of the AMP Endowed Scholarship; a partnership with CSU that provides financial assistance to any AMP alum who majors or minors in music at the university. AMP has graduated three senior classes and has achieved a 100% on-time graduation rate. Of the 17 graduates, 16 have continued their education at a college (one graduate joined the army), with 12 majoring or minoring in music.
Alivia exemplifies how musical proficiency has far-reaching benefits: “there have been times when I’ve resolved a problem — at school or in life — and thought to myself, if I didn’t know music, I would never have figured this out.” Alivia’s story is why the Atlanta Music Project exists and her success would not have been possible without the tremendous support of our donors. As an AMP alumna, Alivia continues
Submitted by: Jack W.
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.
Free Foundation is more than just an organization, it is a lifestyle. We must free ourselves from the stereotypes and stigmas that the world places on what being hungry, homeless, or even poverty stricken looks like, but rather focus on how we can solve these issues and ensure that people have a better future, far greater than what they are currently experiencing.
Through the organization of several events, Free Foundation is able to raise awareness of the issues going on in our community and bring volunteers together to support our initiatives. Our goal is to help in every aspect that we can and foster this same idea into our board members and volunteers as well. One of our most successful events have been our Help Feed Atlanta event. We bring together individuals who are working to server their community, such as barbers and chefs, and we work together to provide meals, care packages, hygiene products, and resources that homeless individuals can use to help get them out of their current situation.
Our goal is to be the new standard of what philanthropy looks like and to inspire others to do better for those who cannot do for themselves. We want to raise up a philanthropic generation that is not about the fame or popularity but is concerned with the number of lives that can be change on daily basis. When it comes to working with those who are less fortunate, Free Foundations remembers the importance of being optimistic and altruistic, as we come in contact with a diverse group of individuals. Our founder fosters advocating for the voiceless through every event that we host, being part of something that is bigger than ourselves and being the change that the world desperately needs.
Submitted by: Team Representative
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.
The Carolina Dance Collaborative is a mobile dance outreach organization with an extensive dance education curriculum that incorporates individual creativity, healthy living, and developing life-skills to reach all populations and demographics in Greenville County and the Upstate of South Carolina. We see beautiful each and every day when we have the privilege of working with children in underserved communities, senior citizens, disability organizations, schools, and community centers. We travel to their space and help participants develop healthy life-skills that will impact them beyond the dance classroom and into their everyday lives.
CDC is making the Upstate of South Carolina more beautiful through giving all people access to dance education regardless of location, ability, and resources. Dance is an art form that uses the beauty of the body and movement to communicate with both the soul and the outside world. We believe that every individual should experience and embody the life changing power of dance. Each student's background, their body shape & color, creativity, and their personalities are to be celebrated. We value collaboration, empowerment, and equity in our classrooms and believe that each individual has value and importance in the class at large.
Our programs range from working with small pre-schoolers to older adults. Each program differs from the other in terms of length of time, curriculum, location, and population served. One of the main barriers for parents we experience every day is the cost of programming. Parents are simply unable to provide enrichment, possibly life changing enrichment, due to the financial strain even for a low cost program. Equity for the Carolina Dance Collaborative is making sure that all dancers have access to our program no matter their circumstances. We raise funds, apply for grants and build relationships with families to support their needs.
One program we have worked with since 2017 is a good example of that. Wheatley Montessori School is a neighborhood preschool program that is specifically located within an affordable housing neighborhood and directly seeks to serve that neighborhood. Sixty percent of their students receive state vouchers and the school's owners also provide scholarships to deserving students. The Montessori Method is of special importance in closing the achievement gap that exists between low-income and minority students and their majority peers.
We see beautiful in how these under-resourced students are impacted through developing them as creative learners. The project aims to connect learning and creativity in order to promote physical and social emotional wellbeing for the students involved and their families.
Beautiful is in every moment with our students. Beautiful is the self-esteem we see grow within and emanate out to the world. Beautiful is the creativity of our students shared with their classmates. Beautiful is the joy on anyone's face when they get to move freely without judgment and with purpose. Beautiful is any group of people with a shared purpose to promote wellbeing no matter how young!
Submitted by: Alyson R Dixon
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.
As a digital marketing agency dedicated to the nonprofit space, Media Cause understood so many of the inherent challenges in changing our country’s social and economic systems. But we also saw the beauty in recognizing our own opportunity—and obligation–to do better within our own industries. So rather than just talking about what to do next, we decided to address the lack of diversity in the marketing, advertising, and communications fields head on—by taking action to change them.
Several members of our leadership team spent months researching hiring trends, and having one-on-one conversations with both agency leaders and aspiring talent. And while we recognized that the factors contributing to the diversity issues in our industry are complex and nuanced, one of the biggest insights that came out of this research was an experience-based Catch 22:
It’s hard for someone to get their first job in the field without previous experience, but it’s equally as hard to gain experience without having had a previous job.
It’s a dangerous (but not uncommon) double-standard, and it creates an unfair advantage for a select, and often non-diverse, group of candidates: recent college grads who have attended “leading” 4 year universities with specialized professional degrees; people with family or friend networks that can assist with getting interviews; and individuals who are in the fortunate financial position to be able to accept unpaid internships in order to build the experience needed to land a full-time entry level role.
We knew that in order to affect long-term change at all levels of the industry, we’d need to reimagine the way things work from the bottom up—starting with the recruiting, training, and retention processes.
So we developed the RiseUPMarketing Fellowship, a purpose-driven career development program that works to break down the barriers that so many diverse candidates face when trying to break-into the marketing, advertising, or communications fields.
Diversity: Many companies define diversity by race, gender, or ethnicity—characteristics that are physically visible on a website’s “Our Team” page. However, this definition doesn’t take into account the many other factors that are also discriminated against in many hiring decisions: age, non-traditional educational background, transferable but not exactly matching professional experience, gender identification, neurodiversity, and more. RiseUP is open to ALL applicants who have struggled to get their feet in the door, not just one specific segment—because not only is there beauty in bringing people with different experiences and backgrounds together, but there’s also greater beauty, and impact, in the work they can create.
Access: In order to make marketing, advertising, and communications careers truly accessible to everyone, we believe in providing a fair living stipend while they’re learning, training, and gaining experience. This means getting rid of the industry’s traditional “unpaid internship” model, and providing enough support so that Fellows don’t feel the need to earn additional income outside of the program to support themselves. Financial independence is SO beautiful. Access also means providing our Fellows with all the tools they need to be successful—including fully-covered online training courses and certifications, a computer, fast internet, and a home-work setup or access to an office.
Experience: Virtual education has come a long way in the last few years, and is a great start for building tactical skills and practical knowledge. But in order to be job-ready, developing professionals need the opportunity to work on real assignments for real-world clients. Not only does this help them understand how their “classroom” learning translates into specific actions and deliverables, but also helps them develop the soft skills that are needed to succeed, like relationship management, project management, teamwork, giving and receiving feedback, and professional communications. Our Fellows start shadowing real account teams from Week 1, and become contributing members of those teams along the way—helping them learn, grow, and discover the places their skills truly shine.
Impact: We believe that there’s always more good to be done to help change systems, expand opportunities, and improve the world. Much of our Fellows’ hands-on training time is spent assisting incredible nonprofits with pro bono marketing services—not only building their own skills, confidence, and resumes, but also helping amazing organizations fulfill more of their missions. There’s nothing more rewarding, or beautiful, than that.
While the RiseUP Marketing Fellowship is still young, we’ve already seen its impact. From our first two cohorts, five of the six Fellows received full-time jobs upon completing their training, with the sixth deciding to pursue an education in design. We welcomed our 3rd cohort into the Fellowship in January 2022, and continue to be inspired by their curiosity, passion, and ambition.
With each new year, we’re also continuing to learn and evolve the program. Since its inception, we’ve expanded the curriculum, streamlined the structure, provided more opportunities for networking and mentorship, and diversified the resources and support available at all times. However, we recognize that in order to make an even greater impact, we need to be able to scale the Fellowship to serve a much greater number of people. We are now at a stage where we are planning to raise outside funding from Foundations and corporate sponsors to enable this growth, and bring more agencies into the mix, to host, train, and sponsor more Fellows.
The See Beautiful Grant we recently received is incredible validation that we’re headed in the right direction, and the grant itself will help us provide our Fellows with more of the training they need to succeed. We’re so appreciative of all of the support, and are looking forward to building a more diverse and equitable industry for years to come.
Submitted by: Amy Small
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