Nihewan Youth Council Background

February 25, 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Re: W.K. Kellogg YES! (Youth Engagement Strategy) and Nihewan Foundation’s Youth Council on Race
For Information Contact:
Buffy Sainte-Marie
808 822-3111
info@youth.nihewan.org

Youth nationwide will join adults to address racism in their communities through Kellogg grantee Nihewan Foundation

    BATTLE CREEK, Mich. -- Hundreds of young people across the United States will take action against racism and cultural misunderstanding through a new program announced today by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

    Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Nihewan Foundation is creating an opportunity for multicultural youth ages 12-20 to get together online to discuss race and culture in the early part of 2001. Nihewan’s mission is to build self esteem in young people of all colors by helping them to get to know each other. The educational foundation is now recruiting Nihewan Youth Council on Race teams from Native American, Pacific Island, Latino, Jewish, Euro-American, Arab-American, Asian and African-American city and rural communities. Nihewan will maximize youth observations, concerns, and recommendations for improved race relations by networking with with fourteen other youth oriented non-profit foundations, as part of a larger initiative of the Kellogg Foundation’s YES! (Youth Engagement Strategy).

    “The timing is perfect for foundations to work together to help youth define race and culture issues in their own generation,” Sainte-Marie said from the her office in Hawaii. “There are foundations eager to help youth make things better, but we need to know how young people themselves see both the problems and the joys of today’s multicultural world. Nihewan intends to find out, and then to work with the other thirteen foundations to identify issues, make improvements and celebrate progress.”

    Through Kellogg’s Youth Engagement Strategy (YES!), Nihewan and 13 other organizations will implement youth-led programs that seek to bridge racial barriers in their communities.

    “YES! will help develop a new generation of leaders who can thrive in a multicultural society,” said William C. Richardson, Kellogg Foundation president and CEO. “The organizations we’ve chosen have identified critical racial issues and have developed sound action plans for moving forward.”

    According to Guillermina Hernandez-Gallegos, lead Kellogg Foundation program director for the initiative, the YES! project will emphasize youth decision making and problem solving. YES! will encourage youth to collaborate with people of all ages as they work to improve conditions in their communities.

    “Throughout its 70-year history, the Foundation has encouraged various aspects of diversity through its grantmaking,” Hernandez-Gallegos said. “With YES!, we’re taking what we’ve learned to the next level.

    “This program will enable everyone involved to learn how nonprofits can better deal with racism or cultural
misunderstandings in their communities. And, at the same time, make room for lasting, meaningful, and authentic engagement of youth. We’ve contracted with Social Policy Research Associates, in California, to help identify the impacts of these efforts and will disseminate the findings broadly so that others can learn from these committed organizations.”

    Other organizations selected to participate in YES! with their unique community-based project include:

Edcouch-Elsa Independent School District, Edcouch, Texas
Delta State University, Cleveland, Miss.
Food Project, Lincoln, Mass.
ROCA, Inc., Chelsea, Mass.
Michigan Neighborhood Partnership, Inc., Detroit, Mich.
Young Women’s Work Project, San Francisco, Calif.
Decatur Memorial Foundation, Decatur, Ill.
Boys and Girls Club of Northern Chautauqua, Chautauqua, New York
Michigan Women’s Foundation, Livonia, Mich.
National Youth Leadership Council, St. Paul, Minn.
Asian-American Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, San Francisco, Calif.
Southern Coalition for Educational Equity, Inc., Washington, D.C.
Institute for Public Media Arts, Inc., Durham, North Carolina

    The organizations selected represent a cross section of the Foundation grantmaking areas: health, youth and education, philanthropy and volunteerism, and food systems and rural development.

    The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 “to help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations.” Its programming activities center around the common vision of a world in which each person has a sense of worth; accepts responsibility for self, family, community, and societal well-being; and has the capacity to be productive, and to help create nurturing families, responsive institutions, and healthy communities.

    The Nihewan Foundation was founded in 1969 by Academy Award winning singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, and is designed to help children build cross-cultural friendships as they study Native American cultures together. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation provided startup funding for another Nihewan Foundation program, the Cradleboard Teaching Project, in 1996, as well as supplemental funds to create the interactive multimedia CD-ROM SCIENCE: Through Native American Eyes, now in use in classrooms nationwide.

For more information about the Nihewan Youth Council on Race, contact info@youth.nihewan.org.

|Welcome Menu|