Our Blog
The stories behind the grants
Lucas Akol: Protecting the Most Vulnerable Children During COVID-19
Lucas Akol’s son, who has sickle cell disease, inspired him to become a community educator and support for other families. During COVID-19, Lucas is providing these at-risk children and families with food and hygiene supplies to stay safe.
You Can’t Be What You Can’t See: The Minnesota Black Community Project
In some ways, the story of the Minnesota Black Community Project is a tale of two men named Walter Scott. Only one of them has had their story told.
Eric Miller’s ‘The Lawn Academy’ Changes Lives in Detroit
For Eric Miller, the path to a young person’s potential runs through the yard of a neighbor in need. “My mother’s name was Deloris Miller. She was a special ed teacher who always said every young person had the capacity to learn, but we all learn through different...
The New Normal
Life before COVID was hurried; overcrowded with overwork, overeating, overscheduling, overthinking… “over” just about everything for a great many people. Perhaps in this great collective pause, we have a moment without those distractions to think about what it would mean to build the kind of “normal” that was worth returning to.
Jennifer Myers Has a “Way With Words”
Jennifer Rae Myers learned the power of words from her father, Raymond Banks. A writer himself, Raymond raised Jennifer to value the art of communication. He took her to the library after school, encouraged her to read, and showed her through example how to advocate for historically disadvantaged people through language. In third grade, her essay on Harriet Tubman won a writing contest on American heroes, a moment she still recalls as the point in which she realized the gift her father’s encouragement had offered her.
Divorce Your Ego: The Heartivist Response to Racism
What would it mean if we could express our hearts for service in the most authentic way possible? If we could hear truths about our world and heritage without it undermining our self-efficacy? If when we looked at others, we saw a reflection of ourselves?
Theory of Change #2: Capacity, Relationship & Collaboration
It is difficult to stand alone and blaze a trail, the destination to which seems only immediately clear to you. It is far easier to stand in community, toward a shared dream of acting with courage toward a kinder, more compassionate world.
Theory of Change #1: The Power of the Individual
The Pollination Project exists out of this belief in the power and beauty of individuals. Every day, our community chooses an individual whose passion project we collectively uplift with seed funding, capacity-building support, and connectivity.
Heartivism: How to Care Without Being Angry
Heartivism is the intersection of activism and heart, where inner transformation creates the causes and conditions for societal change.
Assi Flaviurs’ Health and WASH Project Creates a Safer Future for the Children of Cameroon
For the 180 children and 10 staff members who constitute Bome Primary School in Bamenda in the North West Region of Cameroon, going to the bathroom safely and privately is a luxury. As they do not have access to safe and private toilets, for the past 5 years, they instead have had to rely on an old, open dilapidated tent next to their school.
A Heart of Compassion: Donatella Gelli’s Wildlife Sanctuary Takes in Animals Abandoned Due to COVID-19
The force that moves me is compassion,” said Gelli, a TPP changemaker whose sanctuary—which, in part, rescues domestic animals who were abandoned because their owners feared they could carry the coronavirus–was awarded funding by TPP’s COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund. “I cannot see any living thing suffering. I cannot. I’m not able to pass by if I see someone or an animal suffering.
Foundation Giving, or “The Human Anthill”
Ants can assemble themselves into living bridges or rafts to escape a flood. Although they are small, they accomplish a lot by focusing on different things and dividing jobs within the colony. But who decides what job each ant does? Who organizes foraging, or mobilizes defense against predators? Who is in charge? In short, nobody.
Flowing it Forward
To understand flow funding, it first helps to know who makes our funding decisions. Each application we receive is reviewed by at least three “advisors,” which is our term for members of our participatory grantmaking team. The majority of these 100+ volunteers are changemakers whose own work was funded by The Pollination Project in the past.
Ponselvan Thanapal Battles India’s Caste-Based Discrimination in the Time of COVID-19
She only had enough food left to feed her family for one week. This 35-year-old widowed woman, let’s call her Amara, and her family live in Dharavi, India. You may know Dharavi—it was the slum featured in the movie “Slumdog Millionaire.” This woman lost her husband due to alcoholism a few years back, and since then she has had full responsibility for the caregiving and support of her three children.
Animal Welfare in the time of COVID-19
This time of global crisis has led us all to recognize our interconnectedness. However, many are still failing to realize our deep connection to animals.
On being essential, and being “other”
What does it mean to be “essential”? Two weeks before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King hinted at the answer as he stood at the pulpit of a church in Memphis, Tennessee. He told the overflowing crowd that: “So often we overlook the work and the significance...
Life-Saving Liquid: How Sandip Sankar Ghosh Mobilized Young People to Create Hand Sanitizer in India’s Poorest Slums
Ghosh knew he had the opportunity to use his specialized knowledge to help the communities he had worked with for so long. His ingenious plan? Using the WHO’s gold standard recipe, he created his own hand sanitizer by mobilizing the youth in the Kolkata slums to help him.
Discover Our Youngest Changemaker: Cavanaugh Bell Protects Senior Citizens through the LOVE Pantry
Cavanaugh Bell has spent the last two years giving back to his community of Gaithersburg, Maryland, a significant amount of time for anyone, but even more so when you consider his age–which is 7. You read that right. Bell first began leading a host of care pack initiatives to help the homeless in his community when he was just 5 years old.
From the Ashes: TPP Changemaker Jenny Lowrey Battles COVID-19 in Her California Community, Ravaged by Fire Just One Year Earlier
But then, once again, the unthinkable happened—a pandemic swept through the nation, with California being one of the hardest hit states. All of a sudden, Lowrey was thrust again into emergency mode. “[Our family, friends, and neighbors] have survived the nightmare of the fire and had just gotten back to work. They were finally feeling hopeful again … and then COVID-19 happened. We are now hit with a second disaster before we have recovered from the first.”
Transformational Trust
It was a Monday in early March when I met with Lauren, James, and Carolyn on our executive team. We were starting to see the writing on the wall: COVID-19 was going to fundamentally change the world, to a greater extent than we could have ever imagined. It didn’t make sense to continue “business as usual.” In that meeting, we made a decision: we would pivot all of our focus to supporting frontline grassroots volunteers fighting COVID-19. We never looked back.
First Responders in the Pollination Nation
When you think of first responders, who comes to mind? I would wager that you are picturing lights, sirens, and official vehicles. In the case of disaster relief, you might think of FEMA or the national guard.
I bet you didn’t think about the Cajun Navy.
In the time of COVID-19, who gets to change the world?
In the time of COVID-19, who gets to change the world? In the last two weeks, my team has fielded over 1,000 requests from ordinary people who want to help their communities amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. In a sense, this is the work we’ve always done: finding and...
Seventeen & Saving Lives: Sam Suchin Combats COVID-19 with 3D Printings
When the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, Sam Suchin knew he had to do something. “In the past few weeks, people all over the world have started to brainstorm creative solutions to keep people safe during the outbreak,” says Suchin. “Hope3D has joined the movement.” Enter Project Shield: a project which aims to crowdsource 3D printed face shields for healthcare workers.
Compassion In Crisis: Changemakers Support Vulnerable Groups During COVID-19
TPP changemakers have the ability to pivot and prioritize the immediate need of their communities, families, and the world. This week’s grantees have all stepped forward to ensure their neighbors are safe and have access to vital resources during the COVID-19 crisis....
Our Connections Transcend Physical Distance: Building Resilient Communities
As we grapple with Earth’s ferocity through the coronavirus, she reminds us that we don’t own her. Instead, as James Perkinson, a long-time activist, educator, and poet, and one of my mentors, said, we belong to her. I add that we are her…
Changemaker Warren Campbell Responds Swiftly to COVID-19; Offers Vital Funds to Those Under COVID-19 Treatment
As the founder of AFFORDABLE, a software-based nonprofit dedicated to reducing barriers to healthcare access, Warren Campbell, a TPP changemaker, realized COVID-19 could be a potential health hazard in the US as early as February. Then, something unexpected happened that hit close to home: the grandparents of one of his developers were on the Queen Diamond cruise ship when COVID-19 was identified.
Social Sustainability
TPP grantees are attached to the fundamentals that will grow their communities and nourish the qualities that need to emerge within every individual. They implement social sustainability by honoring the planet, expanding access to technical resources, promoting...
In Solidarity: The TPP Community & the Coronavirus
Our community of changemakers means everything to us–we exist to support it, to support you. Our goals have been and always will be the same: to uplift and empower individuals to create change for a more compassionate world. So when our community undergoes hardship, we take it very seriously, and we want to make sure that no member of our community feels alone. Our team is here to listen, provide guidance, and encourage you as our world grapples with the coronavirus outbreak.
Global Practices
TPP grantees demonstrate and capture the beauty of placing matters into the hands of the community and how to reconfigure present and future moments with the resources and opportunities that currently exist. Taking charge of the current moment is how to create future...
Five Questions with Kiima Stephen, founder of Calligraphic Art & Branding in Uganda
The TPP Grant was a seed for me to start my journey; it turned my dreams into a real sense of work that I was passionate about. It changed my life because I have created a large network of people I work with and the society I serve.”