Spirit of Youth is offering fifteen $1,500 grants for COVID-19 messaging, specifically intended to support youth led projects for middle and high school students. These efforts support the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services #akyouthcombatcovid campaign and are made available through funding from the Alaska Division of Behavioral Health. Youth can create their own media, including but not limited to pictures, memes and videos, and post it to their own social media channels.
Individual teens and youth groups are eligible
For Groups: Grants of up to $1,500 are available to youth groups to facilitate message development, sharing and promotion. This could include graphic creations, memes, social media content, audio and video content or other ways of communicating with teens. Youth producers must receive compensation for their contributions (we highly recommend gift cards to local business but this can be decided by the grantee). Other allowable costs are staff time, equipment, subscription services [such as Adobe Creative Suite (Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, etc.), Canva, Mailchimp, SoundCloud , Dropbox, Google Drive Upgrade, iCloud, Vimeo , Youtube, Zoom etc.], advertising (like Facebook and Instagram post boosts) and other materials needed to complete your project.
For Individual Teens: Teens who are not part of a youth group will have the opportunity to workshop an idea for COVID-19 messaging with Alaska Teen Media Institute (ATMI) through Zoom. Teens who participate will receive compensation (gift cards). Grant recipients are also strongly encouraged to participate in this interactive Zoom meeting in order to share their plans for their messaging campaigns and gain teen collaborators.
Each selected project is limited to a maximum of $1,500 and must be focused on addressing two or more of the following goals.
Messaging Goals:
- Increase awareness that COVID-19 is an extremely contagious virus that people can give to other people—even if they don’t have symptoms.
- Increase community awareness of the need to flatten the curve (slow the rate at which people get the virus).
- Help connect people to resources in the community.
- Promote the use of the Careline (more info about Careline at carelinealaska.com).
- Promote healthy activities while hunkering down (social distancing).
- Promote activities that contribute to mental health while hunkering down (social distancing). This includes healthy relationships, staying connected (including special events like high school graduation), happiness, entertainment, amusement, etc. Get creative! You know what other teens would enjoy!
Deadline May 15, 2020. Read the grant guide here. Apply here.