Honoring Black History Month: Celebrating the Black Community of Greensboro
As we celebrate Black History Month, we recognize the profound contributions of Greensboro’s Black community—past, present, and future.
Supporting Our Nonprofit Partners Through Challenging Times
This is a challenging time for grantees and the entire nonprofit sector as we navigate recent executive orders that may impact funding and support for organizations serving diverse communities.
Guilford County nonprofit offers behavioral health services to families
For more than a decade, the Kellin Foundation has helped provide behavioral health services to the Greensboro community, and now thanks to a grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, it will be able to expand even more.
Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro Announces $1.5 Million in Grants
The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro (“Community Foundation”) announces $1.5 million in nonprofit grants to support the Foundation’s focus on eldercare, health and wellness, economic mobility, and cultural vibrancy in the Triad. $1.1 million of these funds will support capital improvements for equipment, facilities, and housing for older adults through the Charles L. “Buddy” Weill Fund (“Weill Fund”), a permanent endowment of the Community Foundation.
Arc of Greensboro helps connect people with developmental disabilities with their community
70 years ago, parents of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities wanted to find a way to change the public’s perception of their kids.
StepUp Greensboro works to make positive change for people
Motivating, equipping, and empowering people to find a better life. That is the mission of a nonprofit called StepUp Greensboro. With the help of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, the agency is helping people make positive changes in their lives.
Greensboro agency helps female veterans transition to civilian life
They serve just like men in every branch of the U.S. military. They face the same battles and the same challenges. But when it’s time to come home, female veterans often find they face a different set of obstacles as a civilian, and they’re hurdles traditional veterans’ groups aren’t always equipped to deal with.
Cambodian Cultural Center helps preserve heritage in Greensboro
Americans around the country will pause to celebrate Independence Day.
They’ll attend community events, host backyard barbecues with friends, and watch brightly-colored fireworks explode in the evening sky. Our ancestors came from different cultures, different countries and different backgrounds. While we collectively celebrate being Americans, we still try to preserve our cultural heritage, and one group in the Piedmont is working to do that in several ways.
The coconut dance is a folk dance often performed during Cambodian wedding ceremonies. On this day, it’s in celebration of the Lunar New Year with children from the Cambodian Cultural Center located in Greensboro.
“It was founded in 2012 in order to help preserve [Cambodian] cultural heritage,” says Treasurer An Strickland. “We offer programs such as arts and also community efforts and leadership and mentorship programs with our youth.” Strickland says it’s important to teach young Cambodian Americans the traditional arts, language and history of Cambodia.
In return, they help older Cambodian immigrants and refugees. “The programs that we offer are the traditional arts as far as dance culture,” she says. “We also do Cambodian literacy programs as well and a lot of community efforts to help our elderly and non-English speaking residents.”
Nearly 300,000 Cambodians escaped conflict and genocide in their homeland in the 1970s and sought refuge in the United States.
Many settled in Greensboro in 1982, and in 1986, they purchased land for Wat Greensboro, a Buddhist Center on Liberty Road in Greensboro.
The Cambodian Cultural Center has offices nearby. It relies on volunteers, but the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro helps through community grant programs.
“The community foundation has helped enhance our program itself as far as our cultural dance programs as well as showcasing our culture itself. We’ve offered cooking classes. They’ve been able to assist us with that, and we’re going to be starting a traditional classical music class as well,” says Strickland.
In addition, CCC offers community assistance with vegetable giveaways and vaccine clinics. If you want to learn more or if you would like to volunteer your time, visit https://www.cccofnc.org/
Triad Adult and Pediatric Medicine provides access to healthcare for uninsured
Health care isn’t cheap; sometimes even if you have medical insurance; but one agency in the Piedmont is making care available regardless of insurance coverage or financial status.
Triad Adult and Pediatric Medicine provides medical services at six locations in Guilford County thanks in part to help from a community foundation.
Chief Financial Officer Danielle Cole says, “we are a federally qualified health center. We do preventative medicine, wellness checks, immunizations, acute care.”
That may sound like every medical office, but Cole says what makes her organization unique is it cares for all patients, even the uninsured and those who cannot afford to pay out of pocket. The money comes from the Tri-County Health Fund administered through the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro.
“We consider ourselves to be a safety net provider,” says Cole. “So a lot of times if a person is uninsured or they don’t have insurance or the thought is ‘I have a limited amount of income and that needs to go towards gas or food.’ I’m not going to go and get care until it’s a really bad situation, and a lot of times I’m going to end up in the emergency room. Now I have more debt. I have a huge bill, and now I’ve bogged down that system with something that I could have gone to the doctor for and probably been treated and not had to create that effect.”
Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro: Family Forward NC Certified Employer
The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro has been named a Family Forward NC Certified Employer by the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation’s (NCEC) Family Forward NC initiative. A Family Forward NC Employer Certification designates employers that offer policies and practices that support the health and well-being of working families and children.
To achieve certification, NCEC looks at employer benefits in the following policy and practice categories:
- paid leave and wages,
- accommodations for pregnant and breastfeeding workers,
- childcare supports,
- health and wellness benefits,
- and scheduling practices.
“I am proud that my employer, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, has been designated as a Family Forward Certified Employer because we are a family-friendly workplace,” says Martin Acevedo, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro. “I moved to Greensboro for a job, but I stayed for the quality of life that Greensboro and this job affords me.”
The U.S. is facing a massive talent shortage that will result in a deficit of millions of workers by 2030, and a childcare crisis coupled with lack of supports like paid leave mean pregnant workers and working parents and caregivers—especially women—are disproportionately forced to change jobs or leave the workforce entirely or are unable to rejoin the workforce after giving birth.
“Employers want to attract and retain the best employees, and they want those employees to be happy and healthy,” said Muffy Grant, executive director of the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation. The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro offers the following family-friendly benefits to employees and their families:
- Maternity Leave
- Lactation/Breastfeeding Accommodations
- Parental and Family Leave
- Bereavement Leave
- Volunteer Involvement
- Personal Leave
- Jury and Witness Duty Leave
- Military Leave
- Professional Development Leave
- Professional Development
- Education Assistance Benefits
- SEP (7% ER contribution), 403b
- Flex Spending and HRA
- STD, LTD, and Life Insurance – 100% Employer Paid
- Medical and Dental benefits – 100% Employer Paid
- Vision Plan
- PTO
- Office closes on Fridays at 3pm
- Remote Work
- Flex Schedules
- 12 Paid Holidays plus week of July 4th (17 days annually)
Decades of research have established that children need supportive and supported families and communities to build strong brains, along with health and development on track from birth and high-quality birth-through-age eight learning environments with regular attendance.
“For children, our future workforce, there is a critical window of time for brain development during the earliest years of life. In fact, the first 2,000 days of a child’s life are so defining that by the time that child turns eight, his or her third grade reading outcomes can predict future academic achievement and career success,” Grant said.
Launched in 2018, Family Forward NC is an innovative initiative to improve children’s health and well-being and keep North Carolina’s businesses competitive. It is employer-led change to increase access to research-based, family-friendly practices — big and small — that improve workplace productivity, recruitment, and retention; grow a strong economy; and support children’s healthy development. To date, Family Forward NC has engaged with more than 6,900 employers across North Carolina.
For more information about our employee benefits and culture, visit cfgg.org. For more information about Family Forward NC and the Family Forward NC Employer Certification, visit www.familyforwardnc.com.