By Randy Lopez, Program Officer, Wyandotte Health Foundation & 2018 PLACES Fellow A mural in downtown Wichita, Kan., site of the 2018 PLACES Fellows' first site visit. Photo credit: Randy Lopez. Last week, I was hanging at my parents' house with my mom and dad.  As we often do, we were sitting in the kitchen.  I don’t know why we always pick the kitchen; it’s one of the smaller…

By Heather Smith, Senior Program Officer-Justice, The Field Foundation I didn’t set out to become an urban planner.  I stumbled across it in college. As the deadline approached to choose a major. I was flipping through the course catalog and realized that almost all the courses I had taken to date added up to an urban studies major.  Aha!  And that’s when another realization set in. I…

As a PLACES Fellow, the relationship between place and identity has been central to our lessons on realizing equity.  Our recent visit to Charleston, West Virginia – self-proclaimed capital of the Appalachian Mountains – highlighted the complexity, and importance of this relationship. The city is rich with beauty and surrounded by scenery that gives you reason to pause and breathe deeply…

Appalachia is a complex, often misunderstood section of our country’s history. With a legacy of extraction starting with land grants during colonization to salt mining in the 1800s to the timber and coal mining of the 20th century, Appalachia has served as a pawn of social and economic forces that regularly took more than they gave. The people of Appalachia are either commonly vilified as…

Lavender farm on a reclaimed coal mine in Hernshaw, West Virginia I’ve been an environmental advocate for most of my life.  In fact, my fight for clean air and water started in my garage in elementary school.  My first science fair project was an experiment to determine the impact of diesel car emissions on various green plants in our front yard.  And later that year, I would test the…

For years, I have escaped to the beaches of Miami, Florida as an outsider looking to steal some fun in the sun. But thanks to an immersive site visit with the 2017 cohort of PLACES fellows, I possess a greater appreciation and understanding of Miami as a place filled with a rich mix of history and culture unparalleled by any other city in the country. Our time in Miami made the most of my senses,…

The Funders’ Network PLACES fellowship program gives participants from around the country an opportunity to gain in-depth knowledge and growth related to issues of race, class and ethnicity. It was created to provide those working in philanthropy the tools, resources, and best practices needed to increase their effectiveness as grantmakers through coaching, leadership development and…