CLARA LIONEL FOUNDATION

The Clara Lionel Foundation is focused on supporting resilient and sustainable communities globally by increasing access to quality education and supporting emergency preparedness and disaster relief efforts in vulnerable communities.

CLF’s goal is to partner with organizations and communities who have demonstrated a track record of success in their commitment to serving vulnerable populations. CLF works closely with our education partners to ensure that youth have the provisions to attain a quality education and succeed in school. CLF builds meaningful partnerships with emergency response organizations and communities on the ground to implement projects and strategies for mitigating the impact of natural disasters before they strike. Types of projects that CLF will invest in may include hurricane-resistant shelters, hardened health facilities, and investments in solar and alternative powers among others.

Our continued focus on education will create increased access to quality educational opportunities for youth. Through our approach on emergency preparedness, CLF will create stronger communities more capable of withstanding the impacts of natural disasters and therefore less likely to fall into even deeper cycles of poverty.

The Clara Lionel Foundation leverages corporate partnerships, collaborations with other nonprofits, foundations & thought leaders to ensure that CLF’s work is sustainable, innovative, and efficient. CLF believes that significant change is only achieved by breaking silos and forming cross-sector partnerships. CLF views each organization or institution it funds as a partner and not simply a grantee. Through a thorough and collaborative application process, CLF seeks to support organizations that also treat the communities they work with as partners as well. The team at CLF believes strongly that local leaders and organizations are the best leaders to enact local change.

In order to move the needle on issues related to education and emergency response, CLF supports advocacy efforts under these pillars. CLF’s focus on advocacy encourages political leaders to take actionable steps towards improving policies directly related to education and emergency response in their respective countries.

The Clara Lionel Foundation draws on the experiences of our staff and grantee partners who have expertise in areas across nonprofit management, disaster relief, advocacy, and education. Drawing on this expertise allows CLF to use an informed approach towards defining our strategy and meeting our goals. CLF also has a built-in history of working with many organizations at the forefront of the emergency response space. CLF was one of the first organizations to mobilize help on the ground after hurricanes Irma, Harvey and Maria. CLF often plays a coordinating role connecting governmental institutions and national disaster agencies to the philanthropy/nonprofit sector.

In September 2018, CLF launched a $25M philanthropic fund designed to build a new model for emergency responsiveness to help more communities prepare and withstand disasters before they hit. The fund will invest in projects that promote preparedness and resilience, short-term responsiveness, and long-term recovery.

In 2016, CLF partnered with the Campaign for Female Education (Camfed), an organization tackling poverty and inequality and utilized a holistic 360 model that supported young girls in their efforts to attend school and succeed. This partnership has allowed over 7,000 girls in Malawi to advance in their secondary education. CLF learned that a barrier girls faced in getting to school was traveling long distances (many students in Malawi travel four hours or more to get to school). As a result, CLF donated thousands of bicycles and hosted a bicycle repair training in 2018 to enable young women to be able to more easily traverse the long distances between home and school as well as possess the skills to care for their own bicycles or open their own bicycle-repair businesses.

Through the Global Scholarship Program, CLF has provided scholarships to 17 high school students from the Caribbean and South America who are currently pursuing higher education in the United States.

In Barbados, the Micro Grants program has directly supported the purchase of necessary equipment for primary and secondary schools across Barbados. CLF also launched a scholarship program at Operation Triple Threat (OTT), a performing arts group in Barbados that allows students to participate in year-round OTT programming.