St. Croix Foundation CARE Fund

The first five months of 2023 have been fast-paced at St. Croix Foundation - and very productive!

It has been almost six years since Hurricanes Maria and Irma hit the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2017. And while immediate needs were met (with help from GlobalGiving!), the CARE Fund is perhaps more important than ever before. As we write, hurricane season is just two weeks away. Even as we hope for the best, we must prepare for another storm. The models we’ve built thanks to GlobalGiving, including our Farm Tiendas and solarized community centers, are still active and have served through the pandemic, indicating their efficacy. But as the world shifts around us, every community must continue to build, to remain watchful, and to be ready.

Today, we are undeterred in our ongoing efforts to proactively build resilience and capacity in high-impact spaces. It is our very focused mission to leverage every resource we have, and we do this by building People-power and investing in holistic community development, wherein every project, initiative, program, or service intersects to catalyze progress. We wish to thank our friends and family at GlobalGiving for keeping St. Croix Foundation’s CARE Fund in your hearts and minds because the spirit in which it was established is at the core of all we do – community resilience and relationships.

Building Workforce Development Capacity in Solar Installation
First, we just had to give you a quick update on our efforts to nurture a workforce among underserved Opportunity Youth (ages 16-24) in solar energy: We just awarded St. Croix’s vocational school, the Career and Technical Education Center (CTEC), a grant to support their nationally accredited National Center for Construction Education & Research (NCCER) electrical courses!

Government and school protocols around how funding flows can often prevent dollars from reaching direct beneficiaries in a timely fashion. However, having seen what the NCCER program can do for our young people, our workforce, and our community, St. Croix Foundation leaned on our partnerships with our local Department of Education and schools to execute the grant. Within two months, the instructor of St. Croix’s only current solar workforce cohort was armed with the resources and materials needed to enrich his student’s learning!

At the Foundation, we often speak of “feeding two birds with one crumb.” In fact, all of our projects and initiatives are driven by our partnerships, are intersectional, and have multiple impacts – from our Nonprofit Consortium to our grantmaking. Having proven the viability of the NCCER workforce development initiative back in 2021, in which we certified 9 unemployed youth in solar installation and then placed them all in full-time employment, we are struck by how a single investment and strong partnerships can change an individual’s life, build a workforce, and increase an island’s capacity for green energy and sustainability.

VISTA VOLUNTEERS CONTINUE TO SERVE AND BUILD CAPACITY
As the sponsoring organization for St. Croix’s AmeriCorps VISTA team, the Foundation is also happy to report that we currently have 6 VISTAs serving us – all of whom renewed their terms with their nonprofits for a second and third year.

Our VISTAs serve the VI Good Food Coalition, an organization that is nurturing a new system of food security; the Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls of the VI, which offers 100+ young people out-of-school enrichment activities every day; and St. Croix Foundation! Through VISTA we provide daily, on-the-ground capacity-building support to grassroots nonprofits. Our VISTA, Mackenzie, is assisting the Virgin Islands and Caribbean Cultural Center to coordinate the region’s 2023 Caribbean Studies Association, which advances academic cultural scholarship across the region with renowned academics and thought leaders. As an unprecedented opportunity for our civic sector to put St. Croix on the map as a cultural hub, this event is just one example of the broad impact of VISTAs!

To date, we project that our VISTAs’ contributions have helped our sector touch over 10,000 residents – perhaps much more - and we estimate the value of their work to be well over $250,000. The impact of supporting nonprofits in the long term is unquestionable.

Sustaining Holistic Development (and Advocacy) for a Resilient Future
The CARE Fund was initially designed to support holistic recovery and development after the 2017 hurricanes through programming, grantmaking, and direct services. And we’ve certainly made great progress, thanks in large part to GlobalGiving.

Together, we have built so much, and we also hope that our story is one that helps inform our global family about the on-the-ground reality that vulnerable communities continue to face long after a storm has made landfall – and the resources required to continue to gain ground.

Today, with the CARE Fund and our nonprofit sector at the forefront of our minds, we are advocating across the nation and region for the Virgin Islands people. Through our annual Philanthropy Retreat, held this past February, we are advocating for greater access to resources for our nonprofits as federal and local recovery dollars just now begin to flood the territory. We recently hosted the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at our office, in partnership with our nonprofit partners, sharing with his team the “false recovery economy” that St. Croix is in and the role that nonprofits have and continue to take on to meet basic needs. 

Recovery Continues…
Our story is echoed around the world. When a crisis hits, immediate needs are (of course) critical and urgent. But as disasters around the globe, particularly around climate, become more severe and frequent, it is imperative that there is sustained support for isolated communities long past the immediate relief stages.

Today, our civic sector must stand on the frontlines of advocating for fair development practices that safeguard public health and the culture and heritage of our people. Our nonprofits must together sustain new systems of food security and energy independence and open opportunities for workforce development and capacity building in the nonprofit sector itself.

In fact, the CARE Fund has never been more important. We continue to work to identify funds for regranting to nonprofits who continue to serve on the frontlines of crisis – whether political shifts, industrial environmental threats, natural disasters, or pandemics. As we stay the course, building and advocating quietly (and not-so-quietly!), we hope you will stay with us as we seek to proactively strengthen our ability to respond, rebuild, and fortify our resilience.

For more information on any of St. Croix Foundation’s CARE Fund programming and grantmaking, please contact us – and thank you for standing with us!