We helped six amazing organizations in our first year (2010-2011) combat some of the most serious issues facing youth today:

If you want to apply for a grant this year we are currently accepting the CO Common Grant until February 1, 2012 by 5pm.Your organization must serve people living in the seven-county Denver Metro area. Click here to read our Request for Proposals.

*Listed in no particular order

“I Have a Dream Foundation” Foundation of Boulder County (website)

“I Have a Dream” is committed to the needs of, and problems facing, youth in the metro area. The program Positive Futures is a high school drop-out prevention program which motivates and empowers children from low-income communities to reach their education and career goals. Positive Futures offers our students (“Dreamers”) a year-round, academic and social support network includes tutoring, mentoring, cultural enrichment activities, college and career preparation, as well as parental development and support.

 
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado, Inc (website)

Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) matches youth from low-income, single-parent households with caring adult mentors and serves them up to age 18. BBBS’ one-to-one mentoring relationships have been shown to help youth improve their school performance, improve their sense of themselves and sense of future, form positive relationships and avoid negative or delinquent behavior. Adults who were matched with a mentor through BBBS as children said their mentor helped them do better in school and prevented them from dropping out of high school.

 
Florence Crittenton Services of Colorado, Inc (website)

The Florence Crittenton School provides high school education for pregnant and parenting teens. Florence Crittenton Services also provides an Early Learning Center and a Family Engagement Center. All their programs help teen parents raise healthy families.

 
Excelsior Youth Center, Inc (website)

Excelsior Youth Center is committed to the treatment and education of young females to enhance their successful re-integration into their families and communities. YouthRoots funded a program of Excelsior’s that improves reproductive health education opportunities for at-risk teenage girls.

Children’s Outreach Project (website)

Their motto, “It is better to build children than to repair adults” guides them every day. As an early childhood education center, their mission is to offer an integrated, quality, early childhood education to typical, accelerated and developmentally delayed children in the metro Denver area.

Family Star (website)

Family Star is committed to transformation through Montessori education that empowers children and parents to think for themselves, to do for themselves, and to create better lives.

 
Summary of Findings from Community Needs Assessment As it Relates to the Top Three Identified Issues

• High school drop out rate is 50% in Denver   (source: EPE Research Center  - 46.8 graduation rate)
• Every 4 hours a baby is born to a mother aged 15-17 years old in Denver, according to the Colorado Organization and Adolescent Pregnancy, Parenting, and Prevention (COAPPP)
• More than $9 billion tax payer dollars is spent in the US on teen child bearing according to The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
• Almost one in three children in Denver lives in poverty according to Kids Count in Colorado, an annual publication of the Colorado Children’s Campaign.
• Colorado has the fastest growing rate of childhood poverty in the country according to Kids Count in Colorado, an annual publication of the Colorado Children’s Campaign.
• For every one dollar invested, $7 is returned to society in cost savings according to Rand Labor and Population “The Economics of Investing in Universal Preschool Education in California”.