The Black Belt Community Foundation (BBCF) is celebrating several months of hard work in completing two concurrent granting cycles with its Round II of Community Grants for Greene, Macon, Marengo, Perry, Pickens, Sumter and Wilcox counties and its first ever round of Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Selma grants for Selma and Dallas County. The awards ceremony will be this Saturday, Dec. 1 at the Hank Sanders Technology Center conference room at Wallace Community College Selma beginning at 11 a.m.

The total pool of funding for Community Grants (Round II) is approximately $20,000 funded across 22 different community organizations, and for the TRHT grants, approximately $25,000 in funding is being awarded to 6 different organizations based in Dallas County.

This community granting cycle follows the first round of community granting concluded earlier in 2018 and involved the full participation of BBCF’s large network of volunteer community associates active across its 12 county service area of the Alabama Black Belt.  A key component of community granting has been that it is a ‘participatory granting’ process where communities start their own fundraising locally that is then matched with funds from BBCF to create a greater collective impact in funding community enriching work across each county.  22 out of the 28 community grant applications funded represented entirely new, first-time grantees, indicating an upsurge in community-led projects. 

After a month-long grants application process that included public grant seekers workshops in both Orrville and Selma and racial equity workshops held in Selma, the BBCG has completed its first ever round of TRHT grants, approving six community organizations to be funded for their work in Selma and Dallas County.

For more information on BBCF and community granting, please visit www.blackbeltfound.org. To find out more about the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Process as supported in Dallas County and supported nationwide by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, visit  http://healourcommunities.org.