Teamwork makes the dream work

WKKF President and CEO La June Montgomery Tabron, along with Director of Mississippi and New Orleans programming, Rhea Williams-Bishop, will be live with Mississippi Free Press on March 24. Tune in at 6 p.m. CST as these “urgent disruptors” talk about WKKF’s record grantmaking in 2021 (have you heard?!), the importance of truth-telling and the stories of community impact in Mississippi.

Two Indigenous women in Chiapas, Mexico, are leading water-management committees in communities cut off from government water systems. It is life-saving work where a lack of access to clean water causes severe health problems, especially in children. WKKF grantee Cántaro Azul has supported this work in Sitalá, Chiapas, through trainings in community water management. Teamwork makes the dream work — and the water work.  
 
Women’s leadership in Mexico is also being highlighted for the development of community gardens in the highlands of Chiapas. The initiative was created by several organizations with the intent of improving access to quality food, building capacity in agricultural practices and fostering leadership development among local women. WKKF supports the work through a grant to Fondo de Conservación El Triunfo to increase access to income-generation opportunities for women through entrepreneurship and the establishment of women-led initiatives.

The University of Notre Dame (UND) received $3.4 million to support education in Haiti. The institution’s Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child was awarded grants from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the LEGO Foundation and USAID to fund its resilient education programming in Haiti. The support from WKKF is part of an ongoing effort to strengthen holistic child development through three pillars of Haitian society: school, home and church. UND’s role is to foster collaboration among the three major education stakeholders in Haiti – the Ministry of Education, the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church – to create and implement a common vision for strengthening education in the country, especially in areas hit by the August 2021 earthquake.

Nearly 40 million kids in the United States are currently insured through Medicaid and/or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which offers health insurance to children in low-wealth families. But the protections are at risk of expiring for at least 6.7 million of those kids if states don’t take time to administer their Medicaid programs correctly. Here are some actions community members, as well as state and federal policymakers can take to minimize this disenrollment.