Selma to share part of $24M Kellogg Foundation grant to fight racism

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The next time you hear that familiar snap-crackle-pop as you pour milk over a bowl of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies, be reminded that the foundation behind your breakfast cereal is actively working to do some good in the world.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) — founded by breakfast cereal pioneer Will Keith Kellogg and one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States — announced Wednesday it will award $24 million in grants as part of its new racial healing initiative to Selma, Ala. and 13 other communities across the country.

TRHT LogoThe grants are part of the foundation’s trailblazing program, Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT), which is intended “to improve our ability as communities and as a country to see ourselves in each other, so that we can share a more equitable future for all children to thrive,” said La June Montgomery Tabron, president and CEO of the Kellogg Foundation.

“This work is essential because we must bridge the divides in our country. Now more than ever, we must all act in big and small ways to help people heal from the effects of racism.”

Moving into its implementation phase, WWKF will award 10 grants to organizations over the next two-to-five years in 14 places to implement the foundation’s TRHT process and framework.

Using the framework as a guide, TRHT will endeavor to create local, regional and national transformational change in the areas of:

  • Narrative Change: examining how to create and distribute new complex and complete narratives in entertainment, journalism, digital and social media, school curricula, museums, monuments and parks and in the way we communicate that can influence people’s perspectives, perceptions and behaviors about and toward one another so that we can work more effectively and productively toward community-based change.
  • Racial Healing and Relationship Building: focusing on ways for all of us to heal from the wounds of the past, to build mutually respectful relationships across racial and ethnic lines that honor and value each person’s humanity, and to build trusting intergenerational and diverse community relationships that better reflect our common humanity
  • Separation: examining and finding ways to address segregation, colonization and concentrated poverty in neighborhoods to ultimately ensure equitable access to health, education and jobs.
  • Law: reviewing discriminatory civil and criminal laws and the public policies that come from them and recommending solutions that will produce a just application of the law.
  • Economy: studying structured inequality and barriers to economic opportunities and recommending approaches that can create an equitable society.

“The Kellogg Foundation has a strong belief in the inherent capacity of people to effect change in their lives,” Tabron added. “We are very optimistic that these leaders and communities will do the hard work needed to succeed in the transformation they seek.”

Along with Selma, the grants are also going to: Alaska; New Orleans; Baton Rouge, La.; Buffalo, N.Y.; Chicago; Dallas; Los Angeles; Richmond, Va; St. Paul, Minn.; and Battle Creek, Flint, Kalamazoo and Lansing, Mich.