Foundation announces Sept. awards

Staff report

WARREN

The Raymond John Wean Foundation’s September grants, totaling $145,000, included awards for re-energizing the Mahoning Valley College Access Program and reporting by TheNewsOutlet.org on oil and gas drilling.

The foundation also provided funding of volunteer development for Girl Scout programs in the Youngstown area and better coordination of food systems such as farm markets, urban farming and community gardens.

Noting that compared with state and national statistics, the Mahoning Valley has a higher-than-average number of residents holding high school diplomas and a far lower rate of residents who have college degrees, the foundation awarded $50,000 to the Mahoning Valley College Access Program to create a more-focused organization to change those numbers, said Foundation President Jeffrey M. Glebocki.

A $40,000 grant to Youngstown State University for TheNewsOutlet.org is a start toward matching a $300,000 challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for the reporting project, which connects student journalists with professional journalists and journalism faculty to produce multimedia enterprise and investigative reports for legacy media organizations throughout Ohio.

The project’s partners are The Vindicator, WYSU and The Youngstown Foundation.

The Wean Foundation also awarded $25,000 plus about $25,500 in in-kind support to the Tech Belt Energy Innovation Center in Warren to establish the Valley Alliance for Science and Technology; $15,000 to the Girl Scouts of North East Ohio to develop more volunteers for its Youngstown- area programs; and up to $15,000 to the National Center for Appropriate Technology for a review of how area food systems, such as farm markets, urban farming and community gardens, can best support neighborhood revitalization.