Beaverton, April 23rd, 2013. Nike awarded $250,000 to charities in the six-county Portland area at its Nike Employee Grant Fund award ceremony. The event was was held at its Factory Store in NE Portland. All 25 winning organizations were there to receive their award from Nike Paralympian gold medalist and rugby wheelchair athlete Will Groulx.
Nike Paralympian Gold Medalist and rugby wheelchair athlete Will Groulx with grant recipient representatives Andre Ashley, Sports Management Supervisor, Portland Parks & Recreation and Kaig Lightner, Director of Coaching, Portland Community Football Club. Grant: To launch the Portland Community Football Club, a community-based soccer club emphasizing the principles of equal access to sport and diversity, and providing affordable, high-quality soccer for Portland youth.
Nike Paralympian gold medalist and rugby wheelchair athlete Will Groulx and grant recipient representative Christine Getman, Education Program Coordinator, Incight. Grant: To raise awareness and promote inclusive recreation opportunities in the community through a 12-week hand-cycling series for individuals with disabilities.
The 25 local nonprofits and schools received the funds through the Nike Employee Grant Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation for its Spring 2013 cycle.
The Nike Employee Grant Fund, which was established in 2010 and is administered in a unique partnership with The Oregon Community Foundation (OCF), supports projects that encourage physical activity in meaningful ways, especially those that create early positive experiences for children through physical education, sports and play. Since its launch, it has provided 144 grants to organizations and schools that contribute to making Oregon and Southwest Washington great places to live and work.
The Spring 2013 award recipients include a wide variety of organizations in greater Portland, including New City Initiative, a program to increase participation in extracurricular sports and activities among children and youth who have experienced homelessness, and Incight, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering people with disabilities to become contributing members of society.
“These 25 award winners provide innovative programs and passionate dedication to improving our community through physical activity opportunities for young people, as well as offering sustainable social and environmental solutions,” said Kathy Webb, Nike Community Investment Manager and administrator of this program.
“We are proud to support these local projects and connect Nike employees with our communities, not only through the grant making process but through their continued volunteerism efforts with these important organizations.”
Nike employees are integrally involved with the Nike Employee Grant Fund grant making process. With OCF oversight, a Nike employee advisory committee develops grant recommendations. Employees at Nike World Headquarters continue their involvement by volunteering their time and professional experience to help the winning nonprofits achieve their overall objectives. When it launched in 2010, the program was the first of its kind for OCF to partner with a company to bring its grant making and community knowledge to help employees have a greater impact.
“Our team is very excited, as the Nike Employee Grant Fund will help power our second annual PDX Summer Handcycling Series for athletes with disabilities,” said Dan Friess, Executive Director of Incight, a Spring 2013 grant recipient. “Together with our partner, Oregon Disability Sports, we believe strongly in Nike’s mantra, ‘If you have a body, you are an athlete.’ With Nike’s tremendous support, we are looking forward to engaging more riders and Portland area families with inclusive recreation.”
The next Nike awards cycle is open, with $300,000 in cash grants being offered to nonprofits and schools in the greater Portland area (Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, Yamhill, and Columbia counties in Oregon and Clark County in southwest Washington). This cycle will be an increased focus on programs that have positive impact through physical activity or sport, in step with Nike’s support of First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Active Schools program, which was announced in February 2013.
“Nike’s goal is to create a world where physical activity, play and sports are highly valued and an expected, enjoyable part of life,” said Webb. “Our local communities are filled with organizations that are dedicated to creating early, positive experiences for kids in sport, physical education and active play and we encourage them to apply for funding.”
Applications are due June 1, 2013, and are available online at www.oregoncf.org/nike.
Spring 2013 Nike Employee Grant Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation Awardees
The following 25 organizations received Spring 2013 grants:
- Above Coping (Portland) – To bring the joy of skateboarding to youth with chronic health conditions and life-threatening illnesses.
- Adelante Mujeres (Forest Grove) – To develop a model that addresses access to food, nutrition education and healthy lifestyle habits, and food-based entrepreneurial development.
- Child Advocates, Inc. (Oregon City) – To advocate for a safe, healthy and permanent home for abused and neglected youth through trained citizens who live in the same communities in Clackamas County.
- Child Care Development Services, Inc. (Portland) – To help childcare providers assess their environments and use best practices to write and implement nutrition and physical activity guidelines to help children learn healthy habits early.
- Clackamas Women’s Services (Oregon City) – To teach at-risk boys relationship and conflict resolution through sport-related and learning activities, with an emphasis on peer-to-peer modeling.
- Family Stepping Stones (Gladstone) – To help families stay safe, together and thriving by providing therapeutic early childhood development services for children and comprehensive family support.
- Girls Inc. of Northwest Oregon (Portland) – To empower girls with the knowledge, skills and attitudes critical to being in charge of their bodies and sustaining a healthy sense of self in today’s challenging environment.
- Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East (Portland) – To develop a 6,000 square-foot lot into a community garden, fruit tree orchard, open play space and public pathway to promote healthy eating and walking to school.
- “I Have a Dream” Foundation-Oregon (Portland) – To effectively utilize shared resources for matching vulnerable youth with mentors as part of a large-scale collaborative model at one of Oregon’s underserved schools.
- Incight (Portland) – To raise awareness and promote inclusive recreation opportunities in the community through a 12-week hand-cycling series for individuals with disabilities.
- Lewis Elementary, Portland Public School District (Portland) – To install a traverse wall to serve as a new children’s physical education activity and to continue partnerships with local community businesses.
- Mt. Tabor Little League (Portland) – To provide equipment and uniforms for the newly merged Taborvilla Little League (formerly Mt. Tabor and Montavilla Little Leagues) allowing the league members one identity.
- New City Initiative (Portland) – To increase participation in extracurricular sports and activities among children and youth who have experienced homelessness.
- Northwest Youth Corps (Portland) – To provide low-income high-school youth a paid stewardship to help restore Johnson Creek and lead volunteers in a day of service.
- Oregon Human Development Corporation (Portland) – To cultivate confident and joyful youth who enthusiastically pursue their career and life goals through education, internships, training and entrepreneurship.
- Oregon Public Health Institute (Portland) – To prepare childcare providers to become leaders in promoting children’s health by creating environments that support good nutrition, fitness and limited screen time.
- Oregon Zoo Foundation (Portland) – To introduce 400 low-income and minority youth to the benefits of outdoor camping and conservation. Twenty teens from similar backgrounds serve as counselors.
- Portland Parks and Recreation (Portland) – To launch the Portland Community Football Club, a community-based soccer club emphasizing the principles of equal access to sport and diversity, and providing affordable, high-quality soccer for Portland youth.
- SCRAP (Portland) – To expand the environmental education program to K-12 youth with an emphasis on outreach to Title 1 schools, children and their families in North and Northeast Portland.
- St. Andrew Nativity School (Portland) – To equip at-risk youth for improved participation on basketball and volleyball teams so they can experience teamwork and sportsmanship, and develop new skills and confidence.
- The Black Parent Initiative (Portland) – To address the disproportionate number of black youth in foster care through culturally specific, family-focused interventions, and providing expanded duration of services for those already in the system.
- The Dental Foundation of Oregon (Wilsonville) – To support the Tooth Taxi, which provides free dental care, oral-health education and dental hygiene kits to uninsured children and youth of migrant and seasonal workers.
- The Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families (Portland) – To provide children and their families, who have experienced the death of a parent or sibling, with interactive peer support groups.
- Urban Gleaners (Portland) – To expand the Food to Schools program by bringing food deliveries to additional low-income families in elementary schools throughout greater Portland.
- Virginia Garcia Memorial Foundation and Health Center (Hillsboro) – To empower Latina mothers to give their children an early start on healthy habits through supportive group well-child visits.
About NIKE, Inc.
NIKE, Inc. based near Beaverton, Oregon, is the world’s leading designer, marketer and distributor of authentic athletic footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories for a wide variety of sports and fitness activities. Wholly-owned NIKE subsidiaries include Converse Inc., which designs, markets and distributes athletic lifestyle footwear, apparel and accessories and Hurley International LLC, which designs, markets and distributes surf and youth lifestyle footwear, apparel and accessories. For more information, visit www.nikeinc.com and follow @Nike.
About The Oregon Community Foundation (OCF)
OCF, created in 1973, is the largest foundation in Oregon, with assets of nearly $1 billion. OCF’s endowment comes from thousands of individuals, businesses and organizations that have created more than 1,600 funds from which grants are distributed to support the critical work that nonprofits are doing in Oregon. Grant and scholarship distributions in 2010 were $60 million. OCF is governed by a volunteer board of directors and relies on more than 1,600 volunteers around the state to provide local perspective on community needs. Information at oregoncf.org.
Information submitted by Nike.
