BMe

Location:  Philadelphia, Baltimore and Detroit

Website:

The BMe Leadership Awards - BMe stands for "black male engagement" - are given to men who are working to make their communities stronger, the foundation said. Trabian Shorters, founder of BMe, said that "there are thousands of black men who are assets to their communities - and if the rest of us got behind people like these, the city would have more to celebrate."

BMe is a network of black men in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore, that includes professionals, academics, and organizers working on an assortment of community projects. There is no cavalry coming to save the day in communities across America. The visionary leaders that many are waiting for are already here," said Shawn Dove of Open Society Foundations, which also funds BMe.

Chris Rabb, an adjunct faculty member at Temple University, was awarded $20,000 to develop workshops to teach social entrepreneurship to low-wealth individuals. Rabb, author of Invisible Capital: How Unseen Forces Shape Entrepreneurial Opportunity, said he shows people how to "build commonwealth enterprises" that produce benefits for the community. For example, he described starting a barbershop that was geared toward offering living-wage jobs for ex-offenders who cut hair. What if you could turn something like that into a chain of shops? he asked. Rabb said he expected to hold the workshops this summer.

Michael Gross and Bryheem Charity were awarded $10,000 to promote their efforts to "make science cool" in urban schools. They created S.T.E.A.M. Rising to stir "real interest, a passion, a focus, on science as a career," said Gross, a Drexel University graduate. S.T.E.A.M. represents science, technology, engineering, and math, known in educational circles as "STEM," with the arts included to add the "A," Gross said.

Christopher Norris of South Philadelphia was awarded $5,000 to bolster Techbook Online, a local news outlet for people and stories that are "routinely marginalized and left out of the headlines" of the mainstream media, he said. Norris said the money would help pay for equipment upgrades and for expanding the marketing reach of Techbook Online, which he started with Arthur L. Griffin Jr.

Challenge Detroit

Location: Detroit, MI

Website: www.challengedetroit.org

Challenge Detroit is a leadership and professional development program that has invited 30 of tomorrow's leaders to live, work, play, and give in and around the greater Detroit area for one year.

Can retaining and attracting 30 of the best and brightest innovative thinkers really make a difference? Detroit is betting on it. Challenge Detroit fellows have the courage, passion, and drive to make a difference. Combine this with a community-wide effort of highly connected, motivated, creative, innovative thinkers, and the formula will be explosive!

Fellows will receive incentives to live in selected areas of Detroit.

All 30 fellows will work approximately 32 hours per week at their host company for an entire year.

To strengthen the bond between the 30 fellows while demonstrating the positive qualities of the region, Challenge Detroit, along with local organizations, will make monthly social and cultural activities happen.

The 30 will participate in monthly team challenges designed to positively impact the community while keeping the fellows as well as the followers of Challenge Detroit engaged.

During their year in Detroit, each fellow will gain new insights about the city and the greater Detroit region. We expect, through their experiences with Challenge Detroit, these individuals will be intrigued to stay in Detroit, work in Detroit, even start their own business in Detroit. And by doing so, they will have a positive influence on many other people who are looking for a great city to plant their personal flag.

You can be a part of it! Participate, support, or just follow us as our fellows lend their intellectual capital to philanthropic challenges that contribute to the growth and revitalization of the greater Detroit region.

Accept the challenge to be a part of the REVITALIZATION EFFORTS FOR ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT CITIES IN THE WORLD!

Living Cities

Location: Nationwide

Website: www.livingcities.org


Living Cities harnesses the collective power of philanthropy and financial institutions to improve the lives of low-income people and the cities where they live.

Living Cities’ core values – those we believe are fundamental to the organization’s success in achieving its mission – are collaboration, innovation, leadership, and impact. These organizational values guide our everyday decisions about how, why and what we do:

- Collaboration : As a partnership of foundations and financial institutions, collaboration is core to who we are. We believe that respect, diverse perspectives and the open exchange of ideas will lead to the innovative solutions and catalytic change that our country needs.

- Innovation : We take risks, catalyze fresh thinking, and test new approaches in order to creatively disrupt the status quo, change broken systems and provide opportunities for all.

- Leadership : We continually ask difficult questions, challenge obsolete norms, and support others in their efforts to do the same. We look for strategic opportunities to promote our point of view and to move innovation from the periphery to the mainstream.

- Impact : We are committed to making material improvements in the lives of low-income people, cities, and the systems that affect them. We hold ourselves accountable for evaluating our effectiveness and are intentionally self-reflective as we strive to continuously improve, adapt, and inform future innovation.