The Tomberg Family Philanthropies is pleased to announce our 2022 grants. We are happy to be able to support a number of truly excellent projects and organizations working to improve the world in our four primary funding areas of poverty alleviation, the environment, health and education.
We congratulate the following twelve organizations for their successful grant requests. Follow our social media pages for information about each project and organization!
Aspire Indiana Inc.
Aspire Indiana is a Community Mental Health Center (CMHC) founded in 1966 in response to the community need for more comprehensive mental health services. Aspire provides behavioral health services that also address the social determinants of health, including employment and housing assistance, to underserved communities across Boone, Hamilton, Madison, and Marion counties in Central Indiana. Aspire reaches a wide variety of underserved populations, such as people experiencing homelessness, serious mental illness, or addiction, and those who are veterans, recently incarcerated, disabled, HIV positive, or low income.
The project we support will address mental health and recovery through employment support and upskilling.
EMTomorrow
EMTomorrow is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit with the mission to create an accessible emergency medical service (EMS) education pathway. In D.C., financial and structural barriers exist that exclude low-income adults from accessing emergency medical technician (EMT) certification training. This disparity has led to an EMS workforce that is not representative of the population being served, which contributes to a lack of cultural competence and inequity of healthcare delivery. To address this issue, EMTomorrow is providing a completely free and accessible National Registry EMT-B course and employment assistance for program graduates.
The project we support will address the financial and structural barriers exist that exclude low-income adults from accessing emergency medical technician (EMT) certification training.
Grameen Foundation
Grameen Foundation, founded in 1997, was inspired by the work of Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and a global leader in the fight against poverty. Grameen Foundation uses digital technology and data to understand very poor people, in detail, and offer them—and the entire ecosystem of agencies and actors surrounding them—empowering tools that meet and elevate their everyday realities.
The project we support will facilitate access to micro loans in one of the Uganda’s refugee settlements.
Greater Farallones Association
The Greater Farallones Association (GFA) is the non-profit partner of the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Its mission is to ensure the Sanctuary remains an ecologically diverse and globally significant ocean environment.
The project we support is focused on advancing Blue Carbon understanding and management in Marine Protected Areas.
John H. Boner Community Center
John Boner Neighborhood Centers (JBNC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded to serve the residents of the Near Eastside neighborhood in Indianapolis. JBNC’s mission is to inspire neighbors and partners to improve the quality of life on the Near Eastside by providing tools for change and growth.
The project we support will pilot Indianapolis’ first Universal Basic Income (UBI) program.
MAIA
Founded in 2008, MAIA believes that the best way to address the world’s challenges is through the education of girls. MAIA’s founders learned from the women’s microcredit movement in Asia and Latin America that education plays a pivotal role in breaking free of cyclical poverty and making informed choices. To address the numerous challenges facing girls, they recognized that the solution had to be holistic in nature and sustainable in its implementation. MAIA’s pillars of academics, community, and culture work together to create a deeply intentional support system for young women and their families to ensure they can break the cycles of exclusion and poverty that have gripped them for generations.
The project we support centers on the design and creation of a post-high school “gap year” for Girl Pioneers that will secure access to and success in the formal economy for generations of young women in rural Guatemala.
Rainforest Partnership
Rainforest Partnership is an international non-profit social enterprise focused on protecting tropical rainforests. It partners with communities in Latin America to develop sustainable economic alternatives to deforestation, making it more valuable for them to keep their forests standing.
The project we support will help create a sustainable community-led conservation management plan for indigenous communities of eastern Peru.
Rain for the Sahel and Sahara
Rain for the Sahel and Sahara (RAIN) partners with rural and nomadic communies in Niger to enable enduring and relevant livelihoods through educaon and opportunity. We envision a world where even the most hard- to-reach communies have the skills, knowledge, and infrastructure to become resilient to the shocks and stresses they face.
The project we support will help create opportunity though sustainable agriculture for rural and nomadic women in Niger.
Remote Energy
Remote Energy is a non-profit organization formed in 2017. Its team is comprised of electricians, educators and innovators in the PV industry who share a vision to catalyze change in the developing world. Remote Energy is dedicated to sharing their experience, skills and expertise to empower individuals, communities, technicians and instructors in marginalized and developing communities worldwide.
The project we support will develop a solar energy training course in cooperation with the Northwest Indian College to increase the number of Native Americans who are employed in the solar energy industry in the Pacific Northwest.
Studio Samuel
Studio Samuel is an Internationally Licensed NGO dedicated to lifting girls and women from poverty through our proven teach a woman to fish model, which is incorporated in each of our three programs. By removing barriers to her education, the impact on our graduates’ futures increases exponentially on her path to independence, leadership, and viable employment.
The project we support advances Studio Samuel’s “teach a woman to fish” model by empowering female heads of households [ages 24+] to take leadership roles in the community as entrepreneurs.
Sunsar Maya
Sunsar Maya envisions a Nepal in which all of its communities independently and sustainably thrive.
Our mission is to help vulnerable women and children in Nepal build pathways out of poverty through holistic, community-based programs that promote education, mental health, and physical wellbeing.
We do this through a multi-pronged approach that addresses both the short- and long-term needs of a population that suffers from severe social and economic barriers. We work alongside a strong network of collaborators, service providers, and local stakeholders to provide programs that educate and empower communities.
The project we support will help them expand into Rural Nepal.
Thrive Allen County
Thrive Allen County is the largest and most prominent rural health advocacy organization in Kansas. We work relentlessly to make Allen County the healthiest rural community in the state, a community that thrives both physically and fiscally.
In 2017, Thrive’s vision was recognized nationally, as Allen County won the prestigious Culture of Health Prize from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for pursuing innovative ideas and bringing partners together to rally around a shared vision of health.
The project we support will help streamline safety-net applications in three communities: Allen County, Butler County, and Woodson County.
We would also like to thank all the organizations that submitted Letters of Inquiry and / or full grant requests. This year we were able to make grants to 4% of the organizations that applied for our assistance. To those organizations that we were unable to help this year, our decision should not be considered an opinion on the merits of your project. We wish you success in obtaining funding from other sources.
The mission of the Tomberg Family Philanthropies is to support well run and effective programs that make a difference in the areas of poverty alleviation, the environment, health and education. Our focus is on supporting projects that help their recipients build capabilities themselves that will last far beyond the end of the specific project.
You can learn more about us at www.tombergphilanthropies.org.
