Fund for Women and Girls Announces Grant Recipients
The Fund for Women and Girls (FWG) at the Princeton Area Community Foundation has awarded $215,000 in grants, including support for five local nonprofits that are working to help new mothers, mothers in recovery, single parents, families with young children, and children who have been removed from their homes.
More than 20 years ago, the FWG was created as a fund of the Community Foundation to focus its funding on organizations that work to improve the lives of vulnerable women and children in the region. With the philosophy of collective philanthropy, members donate to the FWG, and then meet annually to recommend grants to support nonprofits aligned with the Fund’s goals.
“These nonprofits are doing incredibly important work in our communities, and this funding will make a meaningful difference in the lives of women and children,” said Carolyn Sanderson, chair of FWG. “Thanks to the generosity of our members, we have awarded more than $1 million in grants to more than two dozen nonprofits over the last six years. We can do so much more together than any of us can do individually.”
Freedom House was awarded a $15,000 grant for its Supporting the Family Afterward – Diane’s House program in Trenton. The program helps mothers, who are stable in their recovery from substance use, reunite with or maintain custody of their children by providing housing and case management services. The program also helps women pursue economic independence by assisting with career planning, immediate employment, and household budgeting.
RISE in Hightstown was awarded a $25,000 grant for its Rising to Help Single-Parent Families program. It provides case management wraparound support services to 195 low-income single-parent families, most of which are led by women. Many of the parents live paycheck to paycheck. This program will augment support to the families beyond RISE’s regular services, to include close monitoring, counseling, and extra emergency funds when needed.
The Puerto Rican Community Center in Trenton was awarded a $25,000 grant for its Salud Para Todos (Health to All) program. The program will provide on-site, contracted nursing services to all its preschoolers, including weight, height, hearing, vision, and dental screenings, vaccinations and physical exams. Preventative health services will also be provided to their families.
CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) for Children of Mercer and Burlington Counties, based in Ewing, was awarded a two-year grant, totaling $50,000. It will help the organization train and supervise volunteers who advocate for children in Family Court after they have been removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect. The volunteers handle complex cases of children who have experienced significant trauma, and they are often the only adult who stays consistently in the children’s lives.
The Children’s Home Society of New Jersey in Trenton was awarded a three-year grant, totaling $75,000, for its AMAR Community Doula Program. The program provides improved access to prenatal care for pregnant women of color, especially those who live in areas with limited access to medical services. It is the only community program in the state that supports Latina mothers with bilingual doulas who live in the community. The grant will support two full-time and per diem doulas to provide nonmedical support to 64 pregnant and postpartum low-income Trenton women and their babies.
The fund also awarded a $25,000 grant to the Community Foundation for its work. Additionally, three nonprofits received grant payments for multi-year awards that were announced last year: HomeWorks Trenton, Arm in Arm and KinderSmile.
To learn more about the FWG or to become a member, visit our website at pacf.org/fwg.
SSAAM Receives Mellon Grant
The Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum (SSAAM) has been awarded a $600,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation. This two-year grant will support organizational capacity-building, interpretation of historic sites, and cultural education programming at the only museum in central New Jersey to tell the story of African Americans from the transatlantic slave trade to the present day.
SSAAM is located at the National Historic Register-listed Mt. Zion AME Church in Skillman. The Mt. Zion congregation was originally organized in 1866 by African American descendants of free and enslaved people who lived in the Sourland region. In 1899, the church was moved to its present location at the base of Sourland Mountain, on land donated by members of the True family. This year, SSAAM — together with the Sourland Conservancy and the support of donors — was able to acquire the adjacent five-acre True Farmstead. The historic farmstead was once home to an African American Civil War veteran as well as descendants of Friday Truehart, who was brought to New Jersey from South Carolina as an enslaved 13-year-old boy.
With funding from the Mellon Foundation, SSAAM will continue to develop its heritage garden at the True Farmstead and transform the farmhouse into a vibrant exhibition and education space. The museum plans to expand with the addition of staff in education, marketing, and fund development. Grant funds will also be used to hire consultants on local African American history, heritage gardening, and Black culinary traditions, as well as to produce educational materials for general visitors and school outreach.
“SSAAM’s distinctive surroundings in the Sourland region, with its powerful and deeply rooted African American history and larger-than-life historical figures, allow the museum to offer a broader and truer vision of the past to inspire future generations,” said SSAAM Executive Director Donnetta Johnson. “SSAAM is grateful to the Mellon Foundation for this grant, which positions the museum to serve as a leading cultural organization in central New Jersey and beyond.”
Princeton Einstein Museum Announce New Donation
The Princeton Einstein Museum of Science — an ambitious project being led by Elizabeth Romanaux to transform the former Triumph Brewery space on Nassau Street into a boutique museum dedicated to Princeton’s most famous past resident — has received a $15,000 donation.
The gift honors the legacy of Dr. Stephen Jasperson, who received his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1968 and died in 2016.
The Stephen & Ann Jasperson Charitable Fund focuses in part on promoting science and creative opportunities for learning.
Jasperson taught physics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Massachusetts for 39 years and served as its physics department chair for a decade.
While his research focused on solid-state physics, he was primarily a gifted teacher and science advisor at both the college and secondary school levels. He was a recipient of the WPI Board of Trustees Award for Outstanding Teaching.
Later in life, Dr. Jasperson developed an interest in cosmology and traveled to observatories in the western United States, then developed and taught a course on astrophysics at WPI.
The Stephen & Ann Jasperson Charitable Fund is a family fund which primarily supports educational endeavors, human services, and health associations. It was established in Minnesota in 2017.
The gift from the Jasperson Fund was the second substantial donation to the museum in recent months. In October, the museum announced a $20,000 gift from the McCutchen Foundation, which was established in New Jersey in 1956 to support education, human services, and health associations.
The Princeton Einstein Museum was established in 2021 to create an exciting, world-class boutique museum. It will feature hands-on science exhibits, a walk-in immersion theater, science-inspired overhead sculpture, and a history of Dr. Einstein’s life in Princeton. See more at princetoneinsteinmuseum.org.
