Imaginative approaches to
education and enrichment

At A Glance is a bi-weekly news recap highlighting WKKF grantees, investments, communities and partnerships.

The WKKF-supported documentary Slavery by Another Name challenges one of Americans’ most enduring assumptions: the belief that slavery in the U.S. ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. It tells how even as chattel slavery – when enslaved people, their children and children’s children are owned and treated as property to be bought and sold forever – came to an end in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality. The film originally aired in 2012 but was re-released on Juneteenth for online streaming.   

A major attraction of the recently released Disney movie Cruella is its scores of spectacular costumes. An article in OK Chicas looks at who is behind those fashions: the designer Jenny Beavan and a team of Mexican women artisans working with WKKF grantee NGO Impacto. WKKF supports Impacto’s work to improve income opportunities for women in Mexico’s Chiapas Highlands through capacity-building and linking Indigenous craftswomen to national and international markets.

The 159-year-old Haitian rum maker Barbancourt’s charitable work was highlighted in an article in the newspaper Le Nouvelliste. This work includes a five-year partnership with WKKF grantee Haitian Education and Leadership Program (HELP), which involves funding three university scholarships and a new HELP admissions and recruitment office.

WKKF grantees Zearn and The New Teacher Project just released significant research about what’s effective to combat “learning loss” caused by the pandemic and pre-existing system inequities. State education agencies, districts and schools must prioritize learning acceleration strategies over remediation when making decisions about how to spend incoming federal stimulus dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act. The data is clear: Both in-school and out-of-school learning settings should incorporate learning acceleration strategies to maximize its benefits.

The Detroit Waldorf School began addressing educational needs during the pandemic like many other schools, by pivoting to online learning. But the school decided to tackle returning to school in the fall of 2020 with a unique plan: bringing kids back to school in person in outdoor classrooms, allowing educators to promote positive social, emotional and natural learning experiences. With support from WKKF and others, Detroit Waldorf School built 14 outdoor classrooms that were used throughout the 2020-21 school year, with the exception of a few very cold winter weeks. 

I Count NM received international recognition for its media and advertising outreach efforts encouraging New Mexicans to participate in the 2020 Census. The New Mexico Complete Count Commission’s campaign received four Telly Awards for its TV commercials encouraging New Mexicans to participate in the 2020 Census led by local WKKF partner MediaDesk.