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GenUnity is thrilled to announce a three-year $300,000 general operating grant from Wagner Foundation. This crucial funding will allow GenUnity to run two concurrent 10-week Housing Justice and Health Equity Fellowship cohorts in the Fall (2024) and Spring (2025) - connecting 200 new fellows across race, class, age, and sector; developing their civic leadership; and catalyzing new collaborations on these deeply entrenched issues.

In the long term, this critical commitment will support GenUnity’s community to grow from 200 to 1,000 civic leaders over the next 3 years. By investing in the civic leadership of more residents and institutions, GenUnity will spark a cultural tipping point, where residents feel a deep sense of belonging and harness their agency to shape their community, and where structures (policies, programs, resources) redress harm and create equitable opportunity for everyone to thrive.

“At Wagner Foundation, we are investing in a just and robust community where everyone is valued equally and has the ability to imagine, shape, pursue, and sustain the lives they wish to lead. GenUnity puts those closest to the issues in the driver’s seat of change which very much aligns with our values and our approach to philanthropy. We believe in their human-centered approach to civic learning and leadership development which creates opportunities for everyday residents to be seen as experts, empowered to co-create solutions alongside institutions,” reflects Charlotte Wagner, Founder & President of Wagner Foundation.

About this partnership, Co-Founder & CEO of GenUnity, Jerren Chang, says, “Over the last 4 years, our team at GenUnity has served over 200 fellows and honed our program to cultivate fellows’ purpose, partnership, and power to make a positive difference. The Wagner Foundation has been a critical partner in this journey to date, and as we prepare to deepen our impact in Boston and beyond, we are incredibly grateful that they are deepening their commitment alongside to realize our vision of ‘A Community By Everyone, For Everyone.”

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About GenUnity

GenUnity is a POC-led, Boston-based nonprofit, whose mission is to foster collaboration between community residents closest to critical issues and cross-sector institutions working to tackle those issues - catalyzing the trust, learning, and innovation necessary for systemic change. Through our community leadership programs, residents come together around a shared issue (e.g., Housing) - from those directly experiencing the issue to those working in institutions to address it. They deep-dive into how the issue is impacting their local community and its connection to systems and power structures and identify how to build and use their power to drive positive change. After the program, fellows join our Lifetime Community of Practice where they translate their learnings and relationships into community impact - from introducing new legislation or changing business practices to launching new social enterprises or securing critical resources for themselves and their families.

About Wagner Foundation

Established in 2005, Wagner Foundation is a Cambridge, MA-based foundation that invests in health equity, economic prosperity, and cultural transformation across the globe. The foundation prioritizes work that strengthens equitable systems and supports creative leaders who are considering the bigger picture, investigating a set of related factors that could be holding a problem in place. Learn more at wfound.org.

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