Palisades-Founded Everychild Foundation Reveals 2022 Grant Recipients

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

Everychild Foundation, founded and led by Palisadian Jacqueline Caster, has announced the four agencies that received an “Everychild Foundation 2022 Recovery Grant” of $250,000.

“For the third year in a row, Everychild Foundation has pivoted from its innovative grantmaking approach to respond to the ongoing impact of the pandemic,” according to information shared by the foundation. “The organization announced they will distribute relief grants among multiple nonprofit agencies in the community.”

The four agencies that received a grant in 2022 are Abode Communities, Child & Family Center, New Village Girls Academy and School on Wheels.

Abode Communities is a nonprofit founded in 1968 focused on community development throughout California. Its mission is to “create service-enhanced affordable housing and socially beneficial community facilities that promote the social, economic and physical transformation of underserved communities,” according to its website.

For four decades, Child & Family Center has worked to provide quality care and services to both children and families in need. Today, the organization provides comprehensive prevention, early intervention, diagnostic evaluation and behavioral therapeutic services, as well as outpatient drug and alcohol treatment and domestic violence services for children, adolescents and adults.

New Village Girls Academy, established in 2006, aims to provide a “high-quality educational opportunity for girls who have not been successfully served in traditional public schools” by offering professional internships, educational enrichment and other support.

The fourth grant recipient, School on Wheels, provides free tutoring and mentoring to children in kindergarten through 12th grade who live in shelters, motels, vehicles, group foster homes and the streets of Southern California.

“The change in protocol was prompted by the massive impact that COVID-19 has had on their grant applicants who have found themselves in the overwhelmingly difficult two-fold position of struggling for available funding resources while also witnessing an ever-increasing need for their services,” a statement continued.

Everychild Foundation is comprised of approximately 200 women in the Los Angeles area, including more than 50 Palisadians, and is dedicated to “easing the suffering of local children, whether due to disease, disability, abuse, neglect or poverty.”

In a typical year, the group, founded in 2000, bestows a single $1 million grant to an agency to fund or expand an “innovative, replicable capital project or program filing critical unmet needs.”

“The Everychild Foundation has caused a ripple effect in the community and beyond beginning with its success in leveraging its grants,” according to the organization’s website. “Everychild seeks to fund projects that are prototypes and can inspire replication either within the community, nationwide or even worldwide.”

A team of 20 members, trained by a professional grant consultant, performs an “intense and thorough vetting” of a group of approximately 20 grant candidates. Two finalists are usually selected, one of which receives a $1 million gift by vote of the entire membership at-large and a smaller grant bestowed to the runner-up agency.

In addition to the four recovery grants, Everychild Foundation members also selected four agencies to receive an Everychild Foundation Special Recognition Grant of $25,000 in 2022. These four groups were Boys and Girls Clubs of the Los Angeles Harbor, Communities in Schools Los Angeles, Hope Street Margolis Family Center and St. John’s Well and Child and Family Center.

“As we have continued to witness how the pandemic has placed enormous burdens on so many Los Angeles children’s agencies, Everychild members realized that it simply made sense once again this year to help them address these overwhelming needs,” Caster shared in a statement. “However it has also been very rewarding for us to witness over the past two years of awarding these emergency grants the long-term impacts the can create. Numerous recipients have utilized our funds to establish new virtual infrastructure to reach more of their target populations, and these new systems will last well past the pandemic.”

The four agencies awarded grants in 2021 were Antelope Valley Partners in Health, Child Development Institute, Covenant House California and Jenesse Center. The organization also selected an additional four agencies to receive an Everychild Foundation Special Recognition Grant of $25,000 in 2021. The recipients were Clinica Monsenor Oscar A. Romero, Extraordinary Families, No Limits for Deaf Children and Strength United.

In 2023, the foundation plans to resume its regular operations of selecting one single $1 million grantee.

For more information, visit everychildfoundation.org.