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Our goal in this campaign is to broaden support for locally led initiatives effectively working toward a strong and equitable future for Haitian children, families and communities.
Pockets of Hope showcases Haitian organizations carrying out transformative initiatives, while we share effective philanthropic practices and advise on ways to develop partnerships with the leaders and organizations that are doing the work.
Our commitment to central and southwest Haiti began with investing in community visioning processes. We brought together local stakeholders with firsthand knowledge to identify opportunities that would bring change and improve the lives of their children, families and communities.
Our grantees are developing leaders of a new Haiti, building local alliances and working with community members for long-term changes to improve access to:
Together, we are:
Welcome to Haiti, the world’s first independent Black republic and the first country in the Americas to end slavery. A land of relentless upheaval, both natural and manmade, and of grim headlines — and also of perseverance, innovation, and a fierce love of nation.
Haiti is where women travel hours to sell at market every day, in every kind of storm, to put their children through school.
It’s the land of exquisite kanaval – a beautiful, artistic explosion of cultural memory and ingenuity, of protests under the hot sun, with songs and declarations saying, “We deserve better!”
It’s the street bands, with grounding rhythms and soaring spirits.
It’s the land of cooperative labor and communal strength, where educators, health care workers, farmers, merchants, mothers, fathers and children refuse to give up, where the roots are so deep and strong that no matter what, the branches will grow. And with hard work and determination, Haiti will get there.
Our grants and community partners:
In Biloxi Public Schools, for example, we funded second-grade teacher assistants, a school nurse and technology upgrades in the elementary schools with the highest poverty rate and growing English language learners communities. These investments helped close the achievement gap between low and high socioeconomic communities – making the schools among the top-ranked in the state while also reducing discipline infractions and student absenteeism.
Teacher retention, a national education issue and statewide investment, is trending higher thanks to investments in a teacher residency program that includes learning supports and mentorship.
We support vocational training in new and green-sector careers, like technology, artificial intelligence (AI), the environment, advanced manufacturing and health care – high-paying industries with increasing demand for highly skilled workers. We also support career pathways that are essential to our community’s infrastructure and the health and well-being of our children and families. This includes water technicians, wastewater operators and environmental compliance specialist jobs.
Lack of dependable transportation and quality child care can present barriers to employment for many working families. So our partners provide wraparound services that go beyond just creating jobs, but also build families’ financial literacy, with an eye toward wealth creation.
We are working with our partners to prioritize equity in early childhood education by:
Because of the advocacy work of our partners, pre-K funding over the past decade increased from $3M to $44M, and now about 58% of the state’s 4-year-olds are in publicly funded pre-K programs.
$3M
$44M
Pre-K Funding
Public Pre-K Enrollment
Our investments also help child care and Head Start programs receive professional support and create quality environments that promote learning and developmental growth. This includes social and emotional programming that promotes a child’s holistic development, helps them build positive relationships and enhances their academic success.
Mississippi’s business community is uniquely invested in early learning, recognizing the impact quality child care has on their current and future workforce. Partners in government, communities, schools and providers complete the collaborative ecosystem for realizing this goal.
The health of babies starts with the health of mothers, which is why we also support families’ access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Mississippi’s agricultural history, marred by labor practices like slavery and sharecropping, still keeps people of color from buying and cultivating land. Yet farmers of color are working cooperatively to provide Mississippi-grown fruits and vegetables to families through farmers’ markets, grocery stores, hospitals and schools.
We support communities of farmers working together to share food-growing knowledge while pooling their resources. Their work ensures consumers can access the food they need to lead healthy lives.
Our partners successfully advocated for Medicaid postpartum extension in 2023, which extended Medicaid coverage from 60 days to one year after birth. They won presumptiveDIGITAL Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women in 2024, which allows women to access immediate care while their application for Medicaid is being considered. Both measures represent critical policy changes that can improve infant and maternal mortality rates.
More than half of the state’s counties are maternity-care deserts, with no OB/GYNs, certified midwives or hospitals providing obstetric care. We are working toward a Mississippi where all mothers can give birth safely.
Our partners successfully advocated for Medicaid postpartum extension in 2023, which extended Medicaid coverage from 60 days to one year after birth. They won presumptive Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women in 2024, which allows women to access immediate care while their application for Medicaid is being considered. Both measures represent critical policy changes that can improve infant and maternal mortality rates.
We make our first investments in Mississippi, supporting pre-med scholarships.
Our grants support curricula and other resources at colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the state.
We expand our investments from education to rural health care access, leadership development and job training.
Given the high number of children living in poverty but, more important, the experience and legacy of our local partners, we named Mississippi a priority place, committing investments for at least a generation.
We focus our grantmaking in Jackson, East Biloxi and Sunflower County, while also making state-level investments that can positively impact all Mississippi children. Each of our priority communities face unique challenges that are in need of long-term planning and partnerships:
Many health-promoting resources – like education, transportation and healthy food – are unevenly distributed. That’s why we support efforts that dismantle economic and social obstacles to health, such as poverty and discrimination, so everyone has an opportunity to be healthy.
We maintain a dual focus on reducing health disparities through programs or services, as well as fixing broken systems that don’t work for everyone.
Our funding supports:
Learn more about the social determinants of health.
We’re committed to building a vibrant Battle Creek, anchored by a strong dependable economy and an abundance of opportunities for the future. That means strengthening small businesses and attracting new ones, building a thriving downtown and inspiring more investments and improvements to our city’s infrastructure.
Our grantmaking is:
We invest in a collaborative Battle Creek workforce development ecosystem, ensuring all families, regardless of where they enter the system, have equitable access to stable, high-quality jobs, while removing the barriers that keep people from working.
Our partnerships include:
The future looks bright for Battle Creek kids. Collaborating with Battle Creek Public Schools (BCPS), Kellogg Community College (KCC) and Grand Valley State University (GVSU), we support scholarships to ensure entry into career pathway jobs and a diverse, talented workforce ready to fuel local businesses and our city’s economy.
Opportunities include:
Battle Creek Public Schools has successfully supported 91% of its 2024 high school graduates in pursuing postsecondary education via the Bearcat Advantage and Legacy Scholars programs. Seventy percent of Bearcat Advantage and Legacy Scholars recipients are students of color and 75% of them are first-generation college students.
Battle Creek’s children of all racial and ethnic backgrounds deserve a world-class education with well-resourced classrooms, top teaching talent and abundant career opportunities. We’re working with Battle Creek Public Schools (BCPS) and the community to transform the district with excellence, overturning the severe historical disadvantages created by segregation and policies like Schools of Choice.
Our region’s higher education institutions are getting in on the act by:
Grantees like Pulse use shared data to advance a comprehensive early childhood system, and help launch new centers like New Harvest Learning Center in Battle Creek neighborhoods where there weren’t any. Meanwhile, the Calhoun Intermediate School District is leaning in to an approach to shared services to strengthen child care centers’ business models and leadership.
The Burma Center and VOCES are creating and delivering culturally relevant education in diverse languages for communities of color.
We partnered with the State of Michigan, local child care providers and employers to create affordable child care options through the Tri-Share program, an approach that splits the cost of child care between employers, employees and public and private funding.
Together with our neighbors, we strive to make Battle Creek a vibrant and equitable community, where children’s health and education come first, supported by families’ economic well-being.
When our founder, Will Keith Kellogg, made his fortune, he poured it back into the community that raised him. Believing in the practical wisdom of his neighbors, he invested in the expertise of everyday community members as they collaborated to improve education and health locally.
Making our home in Battle Creek for more than 90 years, we live by those same ethics today, guided by community leaders who best understand the challenges the city faces and the changes that our neighbors want to see.
We focus on reducing health disparities in two ways: through programs and direct services, as well as changing broken systems that don’t work for everyone. This dual focus aims to remove economic and social obstacles while ensuring everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be healthy.
As a result of stakeholder input and analysis of data disaggregated by race, in Grand Rapids we are investing in:
Read about health equity in Grand Rapids: Health Equity in Grand Rapids’ “Neighborhoods of Focus.”