Around Town

New Local Cable Show Puts Spotlight on Groups Making a Difference in Watertown

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A new show debuted on Watertown Cable on Thursday called Inside Watertown hosted by longtime local business and community leader Paul Airasian and your’s truly, Charlie Breitrose, editor of Watertown News. Paul and I have worked together a number of times beginning when I was editor of Watertown Patch and he was hosting Watertown Business Report on WCA-TV. That collaboration has continued, most recently when I helped in the offices of the Watertown-Belmont Chamber of Commerce during Paul’s time as executive director. When he moved on from the chamber, we looked around for other ways to work together and he came up with the idea of a local cable show. I had been a guest on Paul’s previous show, but we wanted to look at Watertown from a broader perspective.

Around Town

Give Back to Your Community During the 4th Annual Watertown Helps Out

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Watertown Helps Out! Fourth Annual Community Day of Service kicks off Saturday, May 6, 8:30 a.m. at the Arsenal Project

How do you give back to the community? Where are organizations that need your help? Are there opportunities for your family to serve? In 2014, the Watertown Community Foundation created a townwide day of service, Watertown Helps Out, to fill this need.

Charity

Watertown Community, Education Foundations Announce Joint Grant Awards

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The Watertown Community Foundation (WCF) and the Watertown Education Foundation (WEF) are pleased to announce their first joint grant awards for education. A record number of 42 applicants submitted proposals for this grant cycle, designed to benefit educational programs in Watertown’s public schools. “We received 42 interesting and wide-ranging grant applications, making the review committee’s job very difficult. We are pleased to be able to fund 23 outstanding projects, for a total of $35,012,” said Thea Sahr, Grant Committee Chair for the Watertown Community Foundation. “It was a pleasure to be able to share our grant making with the Watertown Education Foundation, and we look forward to continuing to work closely with them in the future.”

Elaina Griffith, Co-President of the Watertown Education Foundation, said the collaboration will make it easier for educators to get funds for their projects and programs.

“The idea behind this partnership came about after the realization our educators were having to go to a number of different non-profits to fulfill their grant needs.    Streamlining the grant request process theoretically making it a one-stop shop made sense,” Griffth said. “The $25,000 in grant monies given by the Ed Foundation are a direct result of our Dancing With the Stars fundraising event last year.

Around Town

Watertown Community Foundation’s Affirms its Mission to Serve a Diverse Town

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The Watertown Community Foundation released the following statement. 

Watertown thrives as a community because of the people who have come to it, for 387 years, from all corners of the world. Within the town’s small geographic footprint is an incredible diversity of cultures, heritages, and languages, each contributing to the strength and richness of our town. The mission of the Watertown Community Foundation is to build and sustain a vibrant, close-knit community in Watertown, Massachusetts — now and for future generations. We are proud to support the role of every member of this community, new or old, regardless of where they have come from, what languages they speak, how they worship, or who they love. Watertown Community Foundation: Here for good.

Around Town

Watertown Community Foundation Introduces New Executive Director

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The Watertown Community Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Cathy Berkley as its new Executive Director. Cathy brings more than three decades of management experience in social service, education, government and non-profit, as well as large businesses. She is a passionate believer in the power of small groups of people to build and sustain healthy, vibrant communities. Prior to moving to Watertown, Cathy was Executive Director of the Crisis Call Center of Reno, Nevada, a 24-hour, 7 day, 365 days a year operation providing safe and compassionate support for individuals in any type of crisis. Cathy previously managed Senior Services for Santa Fe County, N.M., and has served on the Board of Directors of several nonprofit organizations involving health, education and community institutions in New Mexico, Colorado and California.

Schools

New Watertown School Grant Program Seeking Applications

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The Watertown Education Foundation and the Watertown Community Foundation announced they are teaming up to offer a new School Grants Program for the 2016-2017 academic year. We are excited to announce that $35,000 is available to seed innovative programming for Watertown’s public schools. Applications will be available on the Watertown Community Foundation website (WatertownFoundation.org) starting on November 1, 2016. Completed applications are due on December 16, 2016 and grants will be awarded by January 20, 2017. It is our hope that this new joint program will provide a more streamlined process for the teachers, administrators, and not-for- profit organizations working in our schools, giving them more time to focus on our students.

Around Town

High School Students Spend Summer as Watertown Community Foundation Interns

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What did you do this summer? For eight Watertown high schoolers, the dreaded first assignment is a little easier this fall. Together they completed over a thousand hours of work as interns for which each received a $1,000 stipend under the Watertown Community Foundation’s high school internship program, WCF announced. The program, open to Watertown residents in grades 9-12 attending any school, required at least 20 hours of voluntary work per week for at least six weeks. This was the second year WCF has offered the program, which grew from five students in 2015 to eight in 2016.

Around Town

24 Groups Receive Share of $75K from Watertown Community Foundation

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On June 2, the Watertown Community Foundation (WCF) held a reception for its 24 spring grantees at the Arsenal Center for the Arts where it distributed over $75,000. Since WCF’s founding in 2003, it has awarded over $725,000 in grants to nonprofits serving Watertown. At the event, WCF Board Co-President, David Siegel, introduced newly hired Executive Director, Jennie Bass. Then as he handed out the checks, outgoing Executive Director, Michael Schade, stated, “We are fortunate to have these outstanding organizations working to make Watertown a special town, and we are lucky our Community Foundation exists to help support them.”

All of the grants are funded from WCF’s Arsenal Education Income Fund. 13 Educational Program Grants totaling $22,943 were given to:

Cunniff Elementary School for an afterschool parent-child book club fostering reading for pleasure and academic success.