Homes and Havens | Kaysie Strickland

Homes & Havens, since its inception in September 2016, helps women who are overcoming crisis, homelessness, abuse, or addiction transition from having a place to live to having a home. Kaysie, a home decorator by trade, helps reimagine and renew their space with paint, furniture, home goods, and as much beauty as she can fit into four walls. Having a renewed home can help them continue to heal, overcome, and grow confident in their victorious new season of life.

On average, it takes about $800 to give one woman’s apartment/home a beautiful makeover. Kaysie takes thriftiness to a whole new level. Many of these women are in the process of trying to recover custody of their kids and having a home that is beautiful and equipped to support healthy relationships gives them confidence and excitement to keep moving forward. Our $3,000 grant will help transform 4 women's homes here in Chattanooga. Read about some of the women Kaysie has already helped here.

Instrument Acquisition for Chattanooga Girls Rock Camp

Chattanooga Girls Rock (CGR) is a non-profit whose mission is to "empower girls in our community to build confidence and celebrate their individuality through collaborative music education and performance." After an inspiring Summer 2016 rock camp for girls ages 10-17, 2017 is growing by 66%! Our $3,000 grant will help CGR build an inventory of gear and instruments of their own before camp this summer. Why buy used gear when you can just borrow?

First, one of the biggest hurdles, logistical quagmires and strains on resources is the process of having instruments and gear loaned out to them for camp. It involves seeking out donors willing to pledge their instruments, gathering the instruments, labeling them and then returning them to their owners at the end of the week. This year nearly 20 drum kits alone are needed for camp, not to mention the guitars, amps, PAs, cables and accessories. Even a small collection of owned gear would relieve organizational stress and energies could be redirected into the quality of programming for camp.

The second reason, and the really exciting part, is the ability to open inventory and gear up to the Chattanooga community at large (outside of camp/CGR programming dates). Imagine a free instrument and gear loan program for all youth in the city aged 17 and under! After camp last year there was a desire from campers to continue playing the instruments they learned at camp. Unfortunately the cost of those items, and the necessary accessories, is often prohibitively expensive. Step in, The UNFoundation. Problem solved, opportunity taken advantage of. Nice job, CGR leaders.

Film Awards for Chattanooga Film Festival

The fourth annual Chattanooga Film Festival brings something undoubtedly special to our city. Every spring, the cinema nerd comes out in all of us as the buzz of one of the city's signature events comes to life. We're proud to play a small part this this tradition by supporting, for the fourth year, the festival's Best Feature Film, Best Short Film, Best TN Filmmaker, and Best Student Filmmaker winner's prizes, $2,500 total. Investing in artists to give them the cash fuel to make more art is the bee's knees.

JROTC Storage Facility at Sale Creek Middle High School

Meet the special forces of Sale Creek Middle High School. Essentially that's what they are. This esteemed group of youth is physically fit and are proficient in survival, first aid, knots, land navigation, rope bridge and a variety of other reactionary skills, which require rucksacks, carry litters, five gallon water cans, sandbags etc.  As a result, they have lots of military equipment that the cadets use for both training and competition. Until now, this equipment has had no home and has been living in various places around the school.

Enter The UNFoundation. We are going to spend $900 and get these hard working cadets a shed from Lowe's to store their stuff. Not only will it give them more time to train and learn but it will prevent items from going missing when strewn all over the school. GO TEAM!

Rivermont Elementary STEAM Lab Weather Station

Rivermont Elementary, a Title 1 school, is in the process of converting 2 unused classrooms into a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) lab where the kids and teachers can build, create, tinker, explore, and learn together—think science lab meets art studio. Construction of the lab is generously being provided by Strauss Construction with design by COGENT Studio and behind all of this is an illustrious principal named Nikki Bailey.

Our grant will fund the purchase of a Davis Vantage Pro2 Plus weather station. It combines science, technology, engineering and mathematics to deliver real time, real life daily lessons. This one station will track rain, wind, solar radiation, UV radiation, temperature and humidity data. The data will be available in every classroom allowing teachers to use the data in grade-appropriate lesson plans and tie the data into the school's gardening program, promote public speaking [enter weather newscaster] and ultimately make hardcore science approachable for young kids. $1,370 well spent.

HomeBoundBooks: Bringing Reading Back Home | Kelsey Butler

24 year old and recent UTC education graduate, Kelsey Butler, is a vibrant, driven philanthropist. While volunteering with 7 children for 30 minutes a day to enhance their reading skills she noticed something, many children had no books at home to read. Kelsey is doing something to change that. She created HomeBoundBooks, a soon to be non-profit dedicated to providing access to "no strings attached" books via a bookshelf in their school, separate from the library.

Some of you might be thinking "but can't kids just go to the library and check out books?" Yes, they can. Unless you checked out a book and lost it. Fines to replace a lost book can be impossible for underserved youth. Our $2,329 grant will put three bookshelves full of books into three schools along with marketing materials to help teachers understand their role in the process. Watch this video Kelsey made about how it all works.

Tell our Own Story: Photography at East Lake Elementary

East Lake Community PTA is a network of parents, teachers, educators, and community members who are fierce, and who will do anything it takes to help children thrive. They believe the arts can play a strategic role in building up children and bringing our community together. So the plan is to equip 10 children in a Spring Break workshop to tell their own stories through art, to begin to see themselves as storytellers, to know that their own unique perspective tells the world something it could not know without them. How? Cameras. Enter The UNFoundation.

Shelton Brown of Humans of Chattanooga and Audrey Menard of ELLAchattanooga (also the PTA president) will teach kids basic skills of photography, portraits, and photojournalism. During the week, students will get to take their cameras home with them to document the stories around them. Students will choose one photograph to have professionally printed and framed and then display their work at +Coffee in an art show. At the end of the workshop, the cameras will be donated to the art program the PTA is building at the Title 1 school, so that in the upcoming year, all 540 students can have access to the art of photography as they learn to tell their own visual stories. #winning

Travel Lego Kits for Foster Kids | 16yr old Eagle Scout

A rising Eagle Scout applied for help with his project. His plan, one pretty awesome for a 16 year old kid, was to custom build 100 Lego travel kits for foster kids in the Hamilton and Catoosa County areas.  After studying the details, he was unanimously voted an UNFoundation winner by a group of 100 budding philanthropists.  (That's us in case you were wondering, our 5th birthday party was huge.)

Lego kits can be expensive and kids in troubled situations, along with the adults who take care of them, may not be able to afford them. Our $1,000 grant will purchase lunch boxes and base plates to build on, all legos will be donated through a drive he plans to have at his school. Volunteers (Scouts, Leaders, Friends) will help with sizing the base plates, gluing them to lids and sorting Legos for each kit.  Catoosa and Hamilton County DFCS as well as Catoosa and Hamilton County Police Departments will help distribute the kits as needed. Way to come together, everyone. Go team!