Seven Santa Clara County Organizations Win Grants to Improve Children’s Health

PALO ALTO – Seven Santa Clara County nonprofit organizations that serve children have won grants from the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, Stephen Peeps, foundation president and CEO, announced Dec. 18.

The foundation makes grants in two areas: protecting children, ages 0 to 5, from injury, with an emphasis on preventing child abuse and neglect; and promoting behavioral, mental and emotional health in preteens. The foundation also awarded 10 grants in San Mateo County, totaling $1.3 million, over three years.

The Santa Clara grantees and their programs, totaling $952,000, over three years are:

Big Brothers Big Sisters: $75,000, over two years, for a community-based mentoring program for preteens, ages 9 to 13. Ninety-five percent of the youth served come from single-parent households, primarily in San Jose, but also in Palo Alto, Mountain View and Los Gatos.

Bill Wilson Center: $120,000, over three years, to launch a new program for sixth-graders at three middle schools in downtown San Jose. The program, called “Building Better Schools One Youth at a Time,” will be offered once a week during a class period and will focus on problem-solving, conflict resolution and leadership skills.

Children’s Health Council: $200,000 over two years, to implement an evaluation program for a Catholic Charities after-school program called Leadership, Ethnic and Academic Pride (LEAP).

Community Foundation Silicon Valley – “The Mayfair Improvement Initiative”: $150,000, over two years, to help support the “Truancy Collaboration for Pre-teens at Lee Mathson Middle School.

Community Solutions: $115,000, over two years, to establish an after-school program for pre-teens who live in the Lilly Gardens housing project in Gilroy. Youth will participate in arts and sports activities, receive homework assistance, work on computers and socialize. The grant will also help to launch a new parent education program that will provide support, skills and resources for positive parenting to overburdened parents of preteens.

Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY): $92,000, over three years, to help expand a “Law for Your Life Prevention” curriculum to seventh- and eighth-grade students at Dartmouth Middle School in central San Jose. The program, started by a Stanford law student in 1996, gives young people the opportunity to participate in group activities such as mock trials, mock debates and city council hearings.

YWCA: $200,000, over two years, to launch the “New Options – Middle School,” an after-school program for preteen girls and boys in East San Jose.

The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health makes community grants twice yearly. Funds for the grants program, which began in January 2000, comes from the foundation’s endowment. A partnership grant from the California Endowment helps support the foundation’s efforts in youth development and reducing high-risk behavior in preteens. To date, 60 agencies have received grants totaling $6.9 million from the foundation.

The foundation was established as a public charity in 1996, when the previously independent Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital became part of Stanford University Medical Center. The foundation’s mission is to “promote, protect, and sustain the physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children.” It is wholly independent of the Los Altos-based David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

For more information about the foundation’s community grantmaking program, call (650) 736-0676, or visit the Web site, www.lpfch.org.