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The Spruce Foundation is proud to announce that its 2017 Peacebuilding Grant will be awarded to Peace Day Philly, a volunteer initiative designed to empower people to build a more peaceful and just world. The $5,000 grant supports Peace Day Philly’s partnership with PeacePraxis to offer a workshop on building upstander skills to Philadelphia youth ages 12-17, and to educators and counselors working with this population of youth.
The Peace Day Philly project is relatively new—started in 2011, and incorporated as a nonprofit in 2013—but has made an indelible impact on the City of Philadelphia. Each September, the organization coordinates workshops, events, and talks across the city in honor of the International Day of Peace, focusing citywide efforts on peaceable practice. So far, Peace Day Philly has collaborated or partnered with more than 150 Philadelphia-area organizations to offer programs featuring themes of social justice, bystander intervention, and compassionate interfaith and intercultural exchange.
The board members of the Spruce Foundation are especially pleased to grant Spruce’s very first Peacebuilding Grant to Peace Day Philly, which has worked for the express purpose of Philadelphia-area peacebuilding since its inception.
“The Spruce Foundation is so excited to be able to support peace-building efforts in Philadelphia, and we couldn’t be prouder to fund the incredible work of Peace Day Philly with this inaugural grant. We were impressed by the collaborative efforts of the organization and the positive, robust volunteer culture that they’ve created in our City, and their peace-building workshops are truly a perfect fit for the type of project we imagined funding with this grant. The board is thrilled to see what Peace Day 2017 brings to Philadelphia,” said Eliza Erickson, President of the Spruce Foundation.
Peace Day Philly will collect its grant—alongside Spruce’s other 2017 awardees, in the focus areas of Arts, Education, Health and Wellness, and LGBTQ—at the annual Spruce Gala, which is to take place on Friday, April 21, at the Center for Architecture and Design at 1218 Arch Street. Tickets are $85 and are available here.