The J. Walton Bissell Foundation is a private charity providing funding to non-profit organizations that deliver direct services to individuals and families primarily in the Hartford area.
Donor Name: J. Walton Bissell Foundation
State: California
City: Hartford
Type of the Grant: Grant
Deadline: 05/31/2022
Details:
Black Lives Matter
In June of 2020, the J. Walton Bissell Foundation refined its mission and compass to respond to manifest needs. They make investments (grants) through that lens of responsiveness to the present and long-term effects of Covid-19 in Hartford, with unflinching attention on and taking responsibility for the wounds from racism and other prejudice which informed disparities in outcomes and will produce different trajectories in recovery. Leaders of any ethnicity who are committed to addressing inequalities in any form, you have our attention. No one will be ignored.
Priorities In 2022
- Disasters expose fault lines.
- Gulfs and valleys appear where before there were cracks and crevasses. They can no longer pretend.
- Since its onset, the Covid-19 pandemic has provided a lens into systemic racism and inequities across all domains of their lives. The urgency of new responses could not be greater.
- Relying on experience from other disasters, we outline three stages of the Covid-19 pandemic beginning at present and the days ahead. Each informs potent and anti-racist action steps – around which they set out to share responsibility.
- Stage 1 of Covid-19 includes acute illness and tacit ill-preparedness. As of February 2022, a sobering number of Hartford residents are in hospitals with severe infection. In addition, one group of employed people are exposed to the virus multiple times a day delivering packages to another group of people working from home. A number of households include family living in close quarters without witnesses to abuse occurring behind closed doors. Usual comings and goings have slowed, and isolation has become inimical to wellbeing. This week media engines tell of a new sub-variant of a recent variant that may dodge medical treatments. The news lands heavily in depleted communities.
- Stage 2 is a time to survey the damage. It is pertinent to all disasters. Photographs taken over New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and satellite images of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 showed devastation and the near total absence of electricity. Emergency crews discerned and triaged desperate need. Then and now, surveying informs responses.
- As Covid-19 hit, in early pictures, they saw trailers turned into make-shift morgues and videos of unnamed persons on ventilators. Right away we designated “essential workers,” who were and continue to be disproportionately Black American and Latinx persons, including undocumented immigrants.
- Narrowing their survey locally, they know that over half of children enrolled in the Hartford Public Schools were absent or unaccounted for when schools closed and learning moved to remote.2 Families did not have sufficient computer equipment nor internet bandwidth. And once vaccines became available, a lack in technology severely disadvantaged those who sought immunizations in a roll-out that pitted person-against-person for an online reservation. Neighborhood clinics in cities like Hartford were serving residents of more affluent suburbs who could more readily secure appointments online.
- Need for emergency shelters to escape violence inside homes accelerated, as did severity of the violence.4 Callers to 211 in emotional distress or expressing suicidal ideations increased.
- Reports of human trafficking grew. In addition, before the pandemic in 2020, there had never been such a high number of “transgender and gender non-conforming people fatally shot or killed by […] violent means, the majority of which were Black and Latinx transgender women.” 6
- S. Census assessments showed: “Black adults were more likely than White adults to have taken on debt to pay for household expenses in January [2021], even after controlling for economic differences.” 7 Additionally, greater food insecurity among communities of color was measured in surveys. “Forty [40%] percent of people of color in [Connecticut] were food insecure compared with 24% of white residents.”
- Both at local and national levels, vaccine rates have been widely disparate. As of February 15, 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that just over half (56.6%) of Hartford residents are fully vaccinated, compared with 77.4% of all Connecticut residents: an illustration that tells far more about their nation’s history than it does about individual behavior.
- Stage 3 is pending. It concerns disaster recovery. They fathom the unspeakable: disparities in wellbeing based on race and ethnicity; gender and gender identity; trauma and mental health; religion; age; visual, cognitive, sensory, or physical disability; sexual orientation; isolation; and home locations spell disparities in their recovery from this pandemic.
- When the number and severity of Covid-19 infections lower regionally, in their state, and nationally, they can expect media sources and contenders for elected office to ring in celebration, even if tempered.
- Some will compare Covid-19 with the seasonal flu. Mask mandates will be gone, and large gatherings will resume.
- Paradoxically, this stage portends new suffering and harm because of the gulf between visible and invisible. While one group is joyfully reuniting with loved ones, another group is grieving losses of life, livelihoods, and homes. Their recovery from the resulting trauma is forecast to follow a different trajectory.
- They know that trauma for youth, as well as adults, is compounded by each additional experience of trauma. Therefore, pre-existing trauma is exacerbated by the traumas brought on by Covid-19. For children and youth, examples of such trauma range from involuntary relocation to deaths of loved ones.
- Pre-existing trauma and other health conditions are known to have increased risk of severe outcomes. “Like adults, children with obesity, diabetes, asthma or chronic lung disease, sickle cell disease, or immunosuppression” can also be factors in recovery. 10
- Pre-existing racism has increased the severity of outcomes over the course of the pandemic, and in turn will increase the severity of hardships in recovery.
- They also know Covid-19 has generated challenges for those with disabilities. The pandemic has increased mental health vulnerability for children and adults. Many in our society think of mental health as something individuals have responsibility for creating and ending; but that is a belief not dissimilar from thinking of racism as something a person of color has responsibility for creating and ending.
- They spoke above of children who became absent from online learning due to limited technology. They have learned that children with disabilities suffered greater learning losses than their counterparts. Now, children who are immunocompromised, or have family members who are, are returning home from schools where mask mandates are relaxing. They still haven’t a vaccination for those under 5 years of age, and removal of protections is leading parents to believe that their high-risk and disabled children are “an acceptable loss.”
- In solidarity with, and support for, those who live with disabilities of all types, they must devise new strategies and support for recovery at the pace that is relevant.
- A new, salient, potentially injurious part of this stage in navigating disaster might be captured best within a neighborhood, faith community, or friend group. Individuals who have felt a shared sense of identity with others may notice others’ lives have improved, but theirs have not. This group can feel the blow of unfairness more fiercely than they might in everyday comparisons. The risk of people harming themselves and rates of suicide become more perilous in this later stage of disaster recovery when it seems that one is not ‘in the same boat’ with one’s peers.
- Knowing all this, making certain diverse trajectories of recovery will not render any person invisible nor blamed for their lived experience, they at the J. Walton Bissell Foundation pledge to meet each aspect of recovery with deep resolve.
- Firm that no members of marginalized groups must be expected ‘to pull themselves up’ nor shoulder the burden of having to educate others about the harms they know, we are deepening our dedication to occupy what we call allyship – with a specific meaning in our hearts.
- Allyship, when they use the term, means the responsibility of every member of a privileged group to learn about harms suffered by members of a parallel marginalized group (and believe them); to engage with others to bridge-build; and to maintain active, radical action to effect change.
- Allyship is an orientation to their work – and lifestyle. It requires us to recognize each area of their privilege. Humility is an essential component of allyship: the humility to turn the mirror on themselves.
- Are they active allies, passive allies, neutral allies, passive opponents, or active opponents?
- It is a well-examined dynamic that natural disasters expose duplicitous and oppressive institutionalized systems and structures. Natural disasters become catalysts to change.
- One last example: in 1972, an earthquake occurred near Managua, Nicaragua. This caused widespread casualties in the capital city: over 10,000 were killed, over 20,000 were seriously injured, and over 250,000 were left homeless. 15 Two-thirds of the population faced food shortage and disease; water was polluted and unsafe to drink. 16 The injuries directly caused by the earthquake are one measurement of the disaster. And, yet, what was exposed was the dishonesty of institutions and the exploitation of citizens. Already difficult conditions were no longer tolerable. The earthquake and its aftermath propelled the Nicaraguan people to a revolution. The earthquake of 1972 is said to be catalytic to the overturn of a harsh and inhuman regime in 1979.
- Disasters expose fault lines.
- Where stiff ground is broken apart and where savage systems have been dismantled, new openings and possibilities become apparent.
Grantmaking Values
- They hold the leaders of the organizations as the experts, rather than ourselves.
- They are not seeking public recognition nor attention by awarding grants.
- They consider the impact that a grant is expected to make.
- They place a premium on being flexible and nimble.
Eligibility Criteria
- The Foundation makes grants only to organizations created under the laws of the United States that are classified by the Internal Revenue Service as exempt from Federal income tax pursuant to Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and as not being private foundations.
- The Foundation’s priority is direct service delivery to persons in the city of Hartford by Connecticut organizations.
- Special consideration is given by the Foundation to programming relating to the abuse of children and others, the nurture of children and families, the aid of those with visual or other physical or mental disability, and the encouragement of the arts.
- The Foundation supports annual operations or specific programs rather than capital projects.
- The Foundation’s policy is not to make grants to an organization in more than three consecutive calendar years and not to make or consider more than one grant to an organization in any calendar year. Should exigent circumstances arise which warrant an exception to this policy, an appeal is required identifying the circumstances. If an exception is made, in no instance will a grant be made in more than four consecutive years.
- Grants are not made to an organization that has not made application therefor or reported on its most recent prior grant, if any.
For more information, visit J. Walton Bissell Foundation.
