Duke Energy announces 2022 Social Justice grants
Duke Energy announces 2022 Social Justice grants
$1M in social justice and racial equity grants spanning 40 NC organizations
On Dec. 1, Duke Energy announced the list of North Carolina organizations receiving a share of $1 million in social justice and racial equity grants.
"Not only does Duke Energy provide an essential service, we live and work in the communities we serve," Duke Energy's North Carolina President Stephen De May said in a statement. "We're committed to playing a significant role in lifting up those communities, leveraging our Foundation to help nonprofits across the state advance equity and justice solutions that help our customers."
Each organization will receive a $25,000 grant as part of the program.
According to the statement, the grants are focused on increasing civic engagement, reducing disparate outcomes, supporting policy, training and criminal justice reform, environmental justice, and providing legal assistance, including pathways to citizenship across the state.
The full list of recipients can be viewed and downloaded here.
A number of the grants were designated for “racial equity trainings.” Two organizations given grants for that purpose include police departments in Winston-Salem and Salisbury.
The press release claims 40 grants were given out, yet the list provided only includes 39 organizations.
The 2022 grant recipients include:
Area L AHEC
Black Wall Street AVL
Brick Capital Community Development
Camino Community Development
Carolina Youth Coalition
Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation
City of Salisbury Police Dept.
Communities In Schools of Chatham County
Community Success Initiative
Durham Public Schools Foundation
EMPOWERment
Exodus Outreach Foundation
FSIC American Innovation & Opportunity
Goler Depot Street Renaissance
International House of Metrolina
Kappa Charitable Trust
Men & Women United for Youth & Families
Mountain BizWorks
National Institute of Minority Economic Development
NC Second Chance
NC Center on Actual Innocence
NC Commission on Racial & Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System
NC for Community & Justice
Partners for Environmental Justice
Prospera NC
Public School Forum of NC
Race Matters for Juvenile Justice
River Front
Rockingham County Historical Society Museum & Archives
Rosenwald Center for Cultural Enrichment
Sandhills Family Heritage
SE Raleigh Promise
SEEDS
Southern Pines Land & Housing
St. Joseph’s-Hayti
Sustainable Alamance
True Ridge
WCU Foundation
Winston-Salem Police Foundation
More To The Story
Duke Energy has given out millions in social justice and racial equity grants over the past few years.
$1 million in such grants were disbursed both in 2020 and 2021.
In 2020, the grants were split across 80 organizations. That number was cut to 40 in 2021.
During the round of grants in 2020, one was received by the Center for Racial Equity in Education (CREED). N.C. State Board of Education member James Ford is the founder and operator of CREED. A number of times in the past two years Ford’s CREED has delivered Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training in NC school districts, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools.
Among the 2021 recipient list was the Southern Coalition for Social Justice; the former employer of N.C. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anita Earls.
Another recipient was “Working to Extend Anti-Racist Education,” also known as WeAre; an organization focused on Critical Race Theory deployment in K-12 schools.
WeAre’s founder Ronda Taylor Bullock promoted the idea of taking Critical Race Theory from “theory to praxis” in North Carolina K-12 classrooms during a Dec. 2021 “Critical Race Theory town hall.” During that event, parental pushback on Critical Race Theory at school board meetings was characterized as “gaslighting.”
Read more about Duke Energy’s past grants:
