Current Grant Recipients

During the 2022–23 League year, the Junior League of Charlottesville (JLC) awarded $10,000 in grants to the following organizations in Central Virginia to fund projects aligned with the JLC’s focus area, Empowering Women Through Mentorship.

Brave Souls on Fire was awarded $4,000 to support their project, Beyond the Shop. Brave Souls on Fire is a peer-run organization dedicated to emotional wellness, culturally affirming peer support, emotional wellness, advocacy, and healing justice for African Americans in the Charlottesville Metropolitan area. Brave Souls on Fire used this award to address mental health care inequity for Black women by providing access to culturally affirming mental health support and mobilizing a Black hair salon to establish a mental health support group, creating space for authentic discussion/education about mental health in a space that has historically felt safe for Black women.

Piedmont YMCA was awarded $2,125 to support their project, Empower Women through Child Development Associate Degree. The Piedmont YMCA believes that positive, lasting personal and social change can only come about when we all work together to invest in our kids, our health, and our neighbors. The YMCA leveraged this award to cover the cost of the Child Development Associate (CDA) test, which is a nationally recognized credential in early childhood education, for five Early Learning Center teachers. A CDA will directly benefit the teacher through increased education, pay, and advancement opportunity as well as the children by providing knowledge, understanding, and ability to implement developmentally appropriate practice, instructional strategies, and tools to connect with children and families and positively influence each child’s development and learning.

Stone Robinson Elementary School was awarded $2,000 to support their project, Books are Windows and Mirror. The Stone-Robinson Elementary school library strives to provide resources and opportunities that all students to pursue their interests and passions as well as books that both represent the individual student and provide insight into the lives of others. With this award, Stone Robinson Elementary School expanded the variety of books in its library to ensure that every student feels represented in its collection, female students and students of minority groups see themselves represented in the library books, and all students have windows into cultures and experiences that are different from their own.

WTJU Radio (UVA) was awarded $1,875 to support their project, Young Women in Live Sound Engineering. WTJU extends the educational mission of UVA by bringing together diverse individuals and communities through exceptional music and conversation. Across the country, more than 90% of sound engineers are men. With this award, WJU Radio seeks to address this gender imbalance by training five young female and non-binary individuals so that they can run tech for live concert events.