America’s Promise Healthy Schools Fund

America’s Promise Alliance is leading this effort as part of the Together for Healthy and Successful Schools Initiative, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The initiative is a collective effort to better understand the dynamics in diverse schools and communities that foster or stand in the way of creating healthier school environments. As a part of this initiative, America’s Promise seeks to activate and align existing and new stakeholders at both the local and national levels to support healthy school environments. Through national and local-level action, this effort will work to expand support from decision-makers, practitioners, and other key stakeholders who will ultimately be responsible for establishing policy, implementing best practices, and embracing school-change efforts that address the real conditions that support or impede children’s health and learning.

America’s Promise has partnered with five leading organizations to work with communities to learn about successfully supporting health and well-being in schools. It is interested in exploring the following questions, which will guide the collective work:

• What factors help or hinder schools in creating healthier school environments?
• What levers can influence local, state, and federal school health policies?
• What are the most effective ways to build public and political will to promote students’ health and well-being?

As a part of this initiative, America’s Promise seeks to affect change by:

• Using a health equity lens and enhancing the ability of local institutions to operate from this lens
• Creating the conditions in which youth and their families can champion change to advance healthy schools
• Accelerating progress of existing collaborative efforts by strengthening approaches that change the broader policies, practices, and systems associated with achieving healthy schools
• Uplifting learnings from locally-driven efforts
• Leveraging local and national partnerships to fuel the national movement for healthy schools

The America’s Promise Healthy Schools Fund will support communities working to create healthier school environments for all children. Recognizing that school-centered health intersects with many areas outside of education—housing, employment, transportation, and food access — as well as many audiences, efforts should serve as a hub for cross-sector collaboration, youth, and community engagement, and broader policy and systemic change.

Grantees will drive local change while serving as models for national awareness building and learning within the broader Together for Healthy and Successful Schools Initiative. Grant recipients will have the opportunity to engage in the following learning, partnership, and awareness-building activities to accelerate their work toward creating healthy schools:

• Partnerships with content expert advisors
• Youth engagement expertise
• National and local communications support
• Access to a learning community

Amount: Three to five grants of up to $150,000 each per year for two years.

Eligibility: Applicants must:

• Be a public, private, or nonprofit organization with an explicit mission to serve children, youth, and communities (e.g., community-based organization, foundation, government agency, school district, collective impact coalition)
• Be connected to multiple sectors (e.g., health, education, housing, economic development) and stakeholders across the community
• Demonstrate evidence of prior collaboration with key stakeholders on health or education initiatives
• Be active in one of the following states: Alaska, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, or Washington
• Have school district commitment as a partner to the initiative and evidence of a collaborative relationship with key district leaders/officials; if the applicant is a school district, it must have community partner commitment and evidence of a collaborative relationship with leaders in the community
• Have commitment to health equity and to serving young people facing the greatest obstacles to thriving

Link: http://www.americaspromise.org/healthy-schools-fund

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