A Gates-Led Donor Collaborative Awards $2.8 Million to Change Attitudes on Poverty

A group of donors led by the Gates Foundation has awarded 28 groups $100,000 each for projects that dispel myths about the poor.

The Irvine, Kellogg, Raikes, Winthrop Rockefeller, Robert Wood Johnson, and Schultz Family foundations and the Omidyar Network also contributed.

More than 1,225 nonprofits submitted proposals for the awards, which are part of a $158 million commitment to fight poverty in the United States that the Gates Foundation made in 2018. The goal is to reduce the stigma of being poor and eliminate inaccurate,nconflicting, or dehumanizing accounts of who is poor and why.

The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and the protests that erupted in cities and towns across the country following the police killing of George Floyd, a black Minnesota resident, make the need to change the narrative about poverty more urgent, the Gates Foundation said in a statement.

“With tens of millions of people newly unemployed, many of them people of color and many facing racism and “othering” each day, there is an even greater need to break down the dominant perceptions about poverty and to replace them with more accurate ones,” the foundation said.

Winners of the award include the Arrowhead Business Group Foundation, a group of White Apache tribal members who will work with the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health to use different forms of media to show how Native Americans were driven into poverty and showcase stories of successful entrepreneurs. Another recipient, the University of San Diego’s Children’s Advocacy Institute, will raise awareness of policies that make it difficult for foster children to escape poverty.