The Spirit of St. Louis Women’s Fund held the 2020 Spirit Awards last night.
Saint Louis Story Stitchers is honored and humbled to receive the strong support of this amazing group to support the development of its youth-led podcast program, StitchCast Studio over the next three years!
The StitchCast Studio project expands Saint Louis Story Stitchers’ current programs to add regular discussion-based educational programming with artist-mentors and youth-led podcast recordings that incorporate the arts. StitchCast Studio podcasts will focus on the streets, gun violence, and finding solutions to issues that are coming at our youth hard. Please listen and follow StitchCast Studio on podcast platforms including iTunes and podbean.
Powered by a diverse group of women from nearly every corner of the St. Louis region, SOS has been a quiet but mighty force for change since 2006, delivering over $2.7 million in focused and informed grants to more than 85 small nonprofits throughout the community.
This year, due to the social distancing guidelines of Covid-19, the members and guests couldn’t gather in person to honor the SOS grantees for the upcoming year. Still, the joy was infectious as the names were announced as follows:
Multi-year grant recipient: Saint Louis Story Stitchers Artists Collective ($100,000 paid in three $33,333 installments, beginning in 2020)
Single-year grant recipients: Almost Home ($25,000), Angel’s Arms ($20,000), Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America, St. Louis Chapter ($10,000), Eye Thrive ($15,000), Home Sweet Home ($25,000), Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project (MICA), ($25,000), Pianos for People ($20,000), Urban Harvest ($25,000), and Volunteers in Medicine, Inc. ($15,000)
Watching the Spirit Awards last night with the Spirit of St. Louis Women’s Fund members, my husband Carmon, and with Story Stitchers in the virtual room was humbling and a little emotional. The awardees this year are doing such important work in our community. Our youth hope to collaborate with some of them through StitchCast Studio to further highlight the issues that they work to address as our three years play out. It is quite an experience to watch the young people at Story Stitchers react to this award. They feel very happy, important and validated. I think they will remember this for the rest of their lives. It gives the youth greater confidence that what they are working to do can be noticed and can make a difference. Our heartfelt thanks go out to the members of the Spirit of St. Louis Women’s Fund! — Susan Colangelo, President and Executive Director of Saint Louis Story Stitchers.
The philosophy that propels the “angel investors” at the Spirit of St. Louis Women’s Fund is simple: they can do more together than on their own, pooling their resources for greater social impact.
They have seen that impact first hand in the work being done by those who benefit from their grants, including nonprofits such as domestic violence shelters and crime advocacy centers, to name a few. The SOS grantees are often short on staff and money, but big on dedication and vision.
SOS support can act as the first stepping stone for these fledgling nonprofits, giving them the credibility to gain larger funding. It is collective giving in its finest form. And the work continues.
To learn more about SOS and the difference these women are making in the community, visit www.spiritstlwomensfund.org.
To learn more about Saint Louis Story Stitchers and StitchCast Studio, visit https://storystitchers.org/.
