The goal is to help protect basic human rights, including economic, social, cultural, civil, and political.

(As defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these are not privileges granted by governments, nor should governments abrogate them.)

As of July 2011, the following two marginalized and underfunded issues will be the focus, in order to bring them more attention and to seek enduring solutions:

1. Prevention of child sexual abuse (CSA) through:
   
   
   1. school-based education programs for children, parents, and teachers;
   
   
   2. evidence-based policies and programs, including community and survivor-led programs, focused on intervention and prevention;
   
   
   3. public education to increase awareness of CSA’s prevalence within trusted circles of family and friends, and to end the taboo about its discussion.
   
   
2. Reduction of recidivism and the number of those imprisoned in California, through:


1. “second-chance” education programs for juveniles and adults who are or have been incarcerated;


2. program evaluation and documentation of the benefits of prisoner education for the students and for society at large, in terms of public safety, tax savings, and community healing.
   

Note: Direct-service organizations should include information in the LOI about the number of people targeted for service in relation to the number of people actually served by the program.

Annual deadline: October 1, 2011 for a letter of inquiry

Geographic priority: San Francisco Bay Area

Reasons for changing the human-rights funding priorities:

Over the recent past, Columbia Foundation has provided significant funding to organizations working for fair elections/campaign-finance reform, and marriage equality: $1.7 million for marriage equality since 2002, and $2 million since 1986 for fair elections and public finance of campaigns. Today’s leading organizations in these two issue-areas have achieved high levels of visibility and stability and are supported by larger funding sources. Thus, beginning in 2011, the Columbia Foundation human-rights program will be giving priority to less visible, less funded human-rights issues, as described above. The foundation’s approach to grantmaking is to try to identify needs and opportunities for start-up funding for issues and programs that have not yet attracted the attention of significant public and private funding.

Send us your ideas

Columbia is actively soliciting ideas and suggestions about underfunded, marginalized domestic human-rights issues that CF might in future years consider as a program priority. If you would like to suggest a priority area (not a specific organization to be funded) for the Columbia human-rights program, please send your suggestion (in 500 words or less) by email to info@columbia.org, or by regular mail. Include a short description of the human-rights issue and, if possible, a description of effective strategies to redress the issue. Please also include your contact information.