Camila and Matthew McConaughey are supporting a new programme that aims to promote school safety.
The Greenlights Grant Initiative was founded by the Texas couple in order to “help more school districts across the country gain access to federal funds to make their students safer, healthier, and happier,” according to a statement on the initiative’s website.
The initiative was initiated almost a year after the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was passed in the aftermath of mass shootings and school shootings such as the Robb Elementary School massacre in Matthew McConaughey’s hometown of Uvalde last May. McConaughey helped get the bipartisan measure off the ground.
According to the project’s website, the measure “made common-sense reforms to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous people, and it also allocated billions of dollars to help school districts make their schools safer.”
However, the majority of the monies were awarded in the form of competitive grants, which may be difficult and costly for school districts to obtain, according to the website.
The Greenlights Grant Initiative’s purpose is to assist school districts in this process. We heard from Congressman Tony Gonzales, who represents Uvalde, that many school district administrators in Texas were either ignorant of or had trouble getting federal school safety monies made available by this law. Applying for federal grants is very complicated, and employing a grant writer, which may cost up to $50,000 to write one federal application, is out of reach for many school districts, particularly those in most need of assistance.
According to the website, the purpose is to “demystify” the grant application process, inform more school districts that grants are available, assist districts in receiving financing, and make securing these types of grants simpler in the future.
“The Greenlights Grant Initiative offers a short-term philanthropic intervention to help school districts get the support they need right now,” according to the website. “Our long-term goal is to reform the grantmaking system so that obtaining federal grant funding is easier.”
The project’s website includes a list of funding available under the Safer Communities Act as well as information for districts that may want assistance in applying for those awards.
The McConaugheys’ simply keep livin Foundation is behind the effort.
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