Unlimited Potential’s Grant Proposal
In collaboration with us, Haneef wrote the following successful grant proposal for a $65,000 grant administered by us with all monies going to Haneef.
From: Haneef Hardy, Founder, Unlimited Potential
To: Omitted at grantor request
Date: 6/3/2021
Subject: Proposed Budget For Grant
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This year, Unlimited Potential will deliver education and inspiration to over 100 youth giving them the skills and tools to achieve their potential. Additionally, we will organize 500+ volunteers to clean up six neighborhoods creating safer, more attractive, and inviting communities for those that lack the resources to do so on their own. We will do this by:
Serving 40 high school-age youth in the Get on Track program this year.
Engaging 60 youth in the Shoptalk speaker series
Coordinating six neighborhood Big Clean Ups bringing 500+ volunteers together to uplift a community
The amount needed to deliver these programs is approximately $62,000. Please find the projected budget for the programs to be delivered in 2021. I do understand that the grant in question would only partially cover this amount and respectfully submit the full total to disclose the actual amount and commit to raising the remaining funds if and as needed.
UNLIMITED POTENTIAL
Mission: Creating opportunities for youth to achieve their potential.
Purpose: We inspire and motivate youth through arts, entrepreneurship, and financial programs to think critically about themselves and others and provide our youth with tools to become financially stable to reach their potential
PROGRAM SUMMARIES
GET ON TRACK
We have designed a program to improve the financial literacy of high-school-age students in an eight-week system made up of educational modules and career guidance. This program aims to immediately impact young people, leading to both immediate and lifetime improvement in outcomes. We teach practical skills strongly correlated with improvement in GPA, graduation rates, and lifetime earnings. A cohort of kids who would go through the financial literacy workshop, we would give them the tools to move into the middle class and beyond. The curriculum is primarily around Everfi, an education technology company that teaches, assesses, badge, and certifies students in critical skills needed for life.
ARTS and Entrepreneurship
Art is another essential component that operates over a 2-month course. Kids in the inner city are looking for different ways to express themselves. Art gives people a voice and a sense of self, according to research. Kids will learn various arts such as visual art, music, dance, and culinary arts. They will connect with local community members who used their art of expression and turned it into a business for the community. At the end of the program, the kids will showcase their art in an art gallery and auction it to community members and supporters. There will also be a talent show for the performing arts +
SHOPTALK
Since the turn of the 19th century, beauty salons and barbershops have served as a special place among African Americans. People have used hair salons and barbershops for hair services, but black people could be vulnerable and talk about issues of importance in the community. Barbershops were a space for customers to play games such as chess, cards, and dominoes, while having conversations about local gossip, politics, and community affairs. Kids will be able to engage in conversation. I will always have a guest speaker in attendance to tell the kids about their journey and how they overcame obstacles in their lives or how they used their “art” to express themselves and achieve new heights in life.
THE BIG CLEAN UP PHILLY
Creating the world we want to love requires action! We are a collective of creatives, artists, and local humanitarians. Every month we unify to enhance underserved neighborhoods. We thrive by putting forth the effort to clean, revitalize, and heal underprivileged and disenfranchised communities as a united front. Organizing on the grassroots level has strengthened our bonds and has proven to yield immediate results. We realized the struggles of our community and want to plant seeds of perseverance and illuminate a path for both current and future generations of leaders, families, and individuals. People that live within these areas have shown appreciation by joining in as we clean, buying us water, cheering us on, and stopping us to tell us much they appreciate what we are doing. Over the last six community cleanups, we have collected enough trash to fill up more than nine school buses and organized over 200 volunteers.
OUTCOMES
Get on Track, the financial literacy course and mentoring program are designed to improve the financial literacy of high age students in an eight-week system made up of educational modules, career guidance, and, in some cases, an entrepreneurial component. This program aims to immediately impact young people, leading to immediate, short-term, medium-term, and lifetime improvement in outcomes. We teach practical skills strongly correlated with improvement in GPA, graduation rates, and lifetime earnings. Thus, we lift the 40% of the population that society has left behind to the first rung of the ladder of success. The "Big Five" financial literacy questions are presented at the beginning, mid-point, and end of the course3. Each correct answer given shows improved financial literacy. Giving inner-city youth tools to become financially literate, which has been proven to increase college graduation rates
Shoptalk is about increasing the emotional intelligence within our youth. Over the course of a year, we Teach our youth that emotional intelligence plays a huge part in success and beating the odds in the inner-city. This construct is defined as a set of abilities that includes perceiving, understanding, and managing the emotions of the self and others. Emotional intelligence promotes successful adaptation across life’s diverse social arenas. In addition, research supports the relationship between emotional intelligence skills and academic success. There are three common ways to measure emotional intelligence: self-report, other-report, and ability. We aim to rely heavily upon the ability assessment of emotional intelligence. We use these metrics to measure our performance with the youth. We teach them the art of storytelling and give them the power to control the narrative of their story.
“Mentored youth, meaning mentored by a non-family member or older peer has been shown to have a 52% better chance of graduating high school than those who did not receive mentoring.” According to mentoring.org, mentoring improves functioning across behavioral, social, emotional, and academic domains simultaneously. We will provide mentoring that supports these outcomes.
The Big Clean Up predicts that a safer community comes with a cleaner community. Studies suggest that cleaning and improving vacant lots can lead to a reduction in crime. Our cleanups bring volunteers together to clean, repair, and improve public spaces or other areas such as vacant lots or abandoned properties that have been neglected, vandalized, or misused. A community cleanup provides some of the most tangible rewards of any anti-crime program. The results are immediately visible. We measure our data by keeping an updated record of how many volunteers come out to support the cause. The amount of trash we collect, the reason our volunteers come out, how they feel once they are finished cleaning, and the amount of time and distance we spend in each community.
CONCLUSION
Our motto is “ be who you needed when you were young.” We believe finance, art, entrepreneurship, mentoring, culture, and volunteering is the gateway to a better existence. Every day we have to remind the next generation they are beautiful, intelligent, willing, and have the right to be who they genuinely want to be. Growing up, I remember having that feeling that I did not belong. Until a mentor looked me in the eyes and saw more in me than I saw in myself. As a community leader and a decent human being, I will be doing myself a disservice not being that person I needed when I was younger.
*I am working with a non-profit called The Shift The Narrative Foundation, which is a recognized 501(c)3. I have an official partnership with them and can use their non-profit status until Unlimited Potential’s IRS application is completed.
Academic-2.pdf (mentoring.org)
Reducing Violence Without Police: A Review of Research Evidence - JohnJayREC.nyc — John
The Big Three and Big Five | Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center (GFLEC)