Focus Area: Early Childhood

Grant Amount: $10,000

Located in the Phillips neighborhood of south Minneapolis. Banyan is a faith-centered youth serving agency that works to strengthen Phillips by offering programs focused on developing youth, strengthening families, and creating community. It operates a successful out-of-school-time program that serves 150 children in grades k-college. Banyan makes a deep commitment to its families, supporting their children from kindergarten through college. In addition to its core programming, it also provides home visits and planning to get its children into quality schools, and then supports their application to college and continues to provide support to college students who attend local colleges.

Grant supports expansion of Banyan’s Seedlings program, an early childhood and family education program that serves children ages 0 to 5 from the Phillips neighborhood and uses evidence-based practices to prepare children for academic success, to break cycles of poverty. Parents and their children attend the program twice a week, in two-hour sessions with one hour together and one hour separate. Expansion will allow Seedlings to go beyond the traditional school calendar, so it can operate year-round and grow enrollment.