DC Social Innovation Project

Upstart Foods
Grant program: Community Lab
Cycle: Summer 2012
Awarded: $1,500 in seed funding and a three-month consulting engagement
Website: www.upstartfoods.com

Born out of the popular Grey DC Market, which provided occasional vending opportunities for start-up food businesses, Upstart Foods is a first-of-its-kind food businesses incubator and resource portal. With the mission of helping DC-area residents turn their passions for cooking into profitable businesses, Upstart Foods provides a suite of free or low-cost services to support these emerging food entrepreneurs. Services include a conference and workshops to help participants navigate legal, regulatory, marketing, strategy, and other business issues. Additionally, UpstartFoods.com serves as an ongoing resource database and forum on the issues critical to success as a food business.

Funding provided by DC Social Innovation Project covered the costs associated with the inaugural conference and workshops and provided conference scholarships for five promising start-up food businesses. Additionally, our corps of volunteer consultants will help identify and create resources for UpstartFoods.com to help entrepreneurs navigate the legal and regulatory requirements of starting a food business.

Looped In
Grant program: Community Lab via Teach for America’s DC Innovation Challenge
Cycle: Spring 2012
Awarded: Up to $3,000 in seed funding and a three-month consulting engagement

With the goal of supporting the formation of game-changing local solutions to educational inequity, Teach For America-DC Region held its second annual Innovation Challenge. Current TFA corps members and alums participating in the challenge brought a problem they were passionate about solving, and through collaborative sessions and independent research, refined their understanding of the problem and developed a proposal for a scalable solution. DCSIP partnered with TFA-DC to provide seed funding and pro bono consulting to help bring the winning idea to life. This year's winner -- and now a DCSIP grantee -- is Looped In, a Web platform and app that connects a student's teachers, parents, and tutors to help them all work together collaboratively towards a student's progress.

Funding provided by DC Social Innovation Project will fund costs associated with building a prototype platform. Additionally, our corps of volunteer consultants will help guide the leadership in creating a strategic plan for long-term growth and sustainability.

Young Doctors Project
Grant program: Bright Idea Challenge
Cycle: 2012
Awarded: $7,000 in seed funding and a package of pro bono services and resources

Led by Dr. Malcolm Woodland – who grew up in southeast Washington, DC – the Young Doctors Project aims to address health disparities of African-Americans in southeast DC neighborhoods while introducing and underrepresented group to careers in the healthcare industry. Beginning in 2013, the Young Doctors Project will recruit a cadre of African-American male high school students to participate in a summer academy where they will learn the basics of physical health and healthy living. Following their successful completion of the academy, they will conduct supervised mobile health clinics in their southeast DC neighborhoods in order to share knowledge and practical tips with their families and neighbors on embracing healthy lifestyles and avoiding common diet-related illnesses.

Funding provided by DC Social Innovation Project will fund the inaugural summer academy and subsequent mobile health clinics. Additionally, our corps of volunteer consultants will help guide the leadership in creating a strategic plan for long-term growth and sustainability.

Food For Life
Grant program: Bright Idea Challenge
Cycle: 2012
Awarded: A package of pro bono services and resources
Website: http://www.carecompanydc.org/content.cfm?id=327

Started as a culinary training program for Washington, DC high school graduates with limited education or vocational options, Food For Life trains these unemployed and underemployed young adults in the culinary industry. Participants learn culinary skills from formally-trained chefs and prepare gourmet takeout meals for up to fifty customers per week. Each week, Food For Life posts the upcoming week’s menu, then customers can purchase their preferred meal. The revenue from meal purchases helps sustain the culinary training program for unemployed youth.

Our corps of volunteer consultants will help the leadership in developing a strategic plan focusing on human capital to ensure the organization has the people and expertise necessary for long-term growth and sustainability.

Press Pass Mentors
Grant program: Community Lab
Cycle: Winter 2011
Awarded: $3,000 in seed funding and a three-month consulting engagement
Website: www.presspassmentors.org

Press Pass Mentors pairs professional journalists with low-income high school juniors and seniors to help them become great writers, equipping students with the communication skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond. Press Pass Mentors launched in the fall of 2011 with mentors from The Washington Post and students from charter schools in southeast Washington, D.C. Mentors guide students through a curriculum that prepares them for the major writing assignments on the road to college: the SAT, college applications and scholarship essays. The organization and mentors also offer students behind-the-scenes field trips to places only accessible with a press pass, like the White House, Congress and an NFL locker room and award each of the program's graduates with a financial scholarship to cover some college costs.
 
Funding provided by DC Social Innovation Project is supporting the launch of the program and the first class of students. Additionally, our corps of volunteer consultants assisted the leadership in selecting cost-effective software to support their donor engagement strategy.

Aya Community Markets
Grant program: Community Lab
Cycle: Fall 2011
Awarded: $1,500 in seed funding and a three-month consulting engagement
Website: www.dreamingoutloud.org/ayamarkets

Founded in 2008, Dreaming Out Loud (DOL) was created in response to the educational disparities in underserved urban communities. Dreaming Out Loud’s services focus primarily on Wards 7 and 8 in Washington, DC, where some of the most pressing economic, educational and social development needs converge to affect young people. One especially prevalent issue is the lack of access to healthy and nutritious food that makes Ward 7 a food desert.

Dreaming Out Loud’s answer was Aya Community Market, a community-centered holistic health and economic development initiative that combines education, farmers’ markets and community supported sustainable agriculture to provide access to healthy food and improved nutrition Ward 7. The market strives to address a neighborhood imbalance, where there are only four supermarkets for 75,000 people. The market features local vendors, fresh produce, and baked goods. The market also engages volunteers and youth (ages 14-21) to build leadership skills and provide character development in order to conduct health outreach and education.

Funding provided by DC Social Innovation Project supported the launch of Aya Community Markets. Additionally, our corps of volunteer consultants guided and supported Dreaming Out Loud in creating a strategic plan.

Living Images In My World
Grant program: Community Lab
Cycle: Summer 2011
Awarded: $1,500 in seed funding and a three-month consulting engagement
Website: http://isawtheexperienceoflearning.org/experience-in-dc.html

Seeking a better way to engage students in learning about learning history, Quentina Johnson created Living Images In My World, a summer experiential learning program for youth in Columbia Heights. This project was developed and implemented by, I Saw The Experience of Learning, a non-profit education organization developed to nurture, cultivate, and inspire genius in culturally diverse communities. During the summer of 2011, DC high school visual art students and Howard University college students worked with the organization to lead and direct an arts-integrated research project for a team of twenty 6th-8th grade students enrolled in the Columbia Heights Youth Club. The purpose was to create a historical restoration of lost African-American identities buried beneath pre-Civil War sites in Northwest DC. By the end of the program, a video documentary was produced along with a blog and book documenting the students’ research and experiences. Through this project and other projects in the future, I Saw The Experience of Learning plans to ignite a passion for learning and creativity by engaging students in experiential learning programs by putting them in the role of a historian or archaeologist.

Funding provided by DC Social Innovation Project supported the launch of Living Images In My World. Additionally, our corps of volunteer consultants assisted the organization in developing a revenue-generating program to provide ongoing financial sustainability for the program.

Moms on the Move
Grant program: Community Lab
Cycle: Spring 2011
Awarded: $1,500 in seed funding
Website: www.anacostiayoga.com/p/wellness-programs.html

To address a lack of health education and resources for single mothers in Anacostia, Sariane Leigh created Moms on the Move. Developed in partnership with WELL Consulting and the National Association on Teen Fitness and Exercise, Moms on the Move provides a six-week series of health and wellness educational workshops for twenty single mothers ages 18-35. Topics and activities include urban farming, yoga and zumba instruction, identifying neighborhood healthcare services, healthy cooking instruction, weight loss and management, and a walking tour of healthy food shopping in Anacostia. Moms on the Moved is poised to become a model of coordinating neighborhood resources and alternative forms of fitness to create a healthy lifestyle for single mothers and their children.

Funding provided by DC Social Innovation Project supported the launch of Moms on the Move.