Posted on August 26, 2011

Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles Announces 2011 Cutting Edge Grants

The Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles has announced grants totaling $1.2 million to seven nonprofit organizations working to enhance Jewish life in the region.

Made through the foundation's Cutting Edge Grants initiative, the awards will support creative thinkers, social entrepreneurs, and innovative organizations as they work to develop and implement transformative programs of high visibility and impact in the Los Angeles Jewish community. This year's recipients include Beith T'Shuvah, which was awarded a three-year, $250,000 grant to launch a program that will train and place fifty substance-abuse-recovering interns in technology-based careers such as social media marketing; Moishe House, which will receive $200,000 over two years for a program that aims to re-connect post-college young adults with their Jewish identity through social and educational events; and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, which was awarded a three-year, $185,000 grant to serve 1,000 Jewish families in need of assistance due to economic or transitional life issues at one of four synagogues participating in its program, Caring Community: Help Where and When You Need It.

Other recipients are the Builders of Jewish Education of Greater Los Angeles, which was awarded a three-year, $240,000 grant for the Los Angeles Online Jewish Academy; the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which will receive $125,000 over two years to engage some 3,800 students at five Los Angeles college campuses in its new program, Addressing the New Anti-Semitism: A Multimedia Educational Program for Campuses; the Israeli Leadership Council, which was awarded a three-year, $100,000 grant to launch a program designed to help 10,000 Jewish and Israeli-American Angelenos volunteer through an online social volunteer network; and the Academy for Jewish Religion, California, which will receive $100,000 over three years to train seven faculty members from three institutions on how to implement an inter-religious studies concentration.

"The recipients of the 2011 Cutting Edge Grants represent some of the most creative and ground-breaking thoughts and approaches to the area of social and human services in Greater Los Angeles," said Jewish Community Foundation president and CEO Marvin I. Schotland. "We look forward with great anticipation to watching these very special programs come to fruition for the betterment of the Jewish community over the next two to three years."