Founding Rationale
Greater Boston is a diverse and sophisticated metropolis, but city kids and suburban kids rarely interact with one another in meaningful ways, to everyone’s detriment. Segregation persists as a prime barrier to cross-racial understanding and racial justice.
Racially diverse schools and school desegregation efforts provide the opportunity for cross-racial understanding but not the means. We need to promote more informal encounters and settings to help kids develop relationships and to deliver on the promise and mutual benefits of a more integrated educational environment.
There is an absence of funding and programming aimed primarily at promoting cross-racial social interaction and understanding.
Boston Bridges Initiative awards grants that support initiatives beyond the classroom. These grants foster lasting friendships and dialogue among students and families within communities.
Thank you for joining us on this journey.
Partnering with Schools
Boston Bridges Initiative provides funding to support school staff and administrators’ efforts to create a more inclusive and safe environment for cross-racial relationships to form outside the classroom.
Since racial understanding and awareness are developed primarily in K-12, Boston Bridges Initiaitve will foster meaningful relationships across race and geography with a three-pronged partnership approach to create opportunities for friendship, dialogue, and learning.
Peek Inside the Program!
Elementary Students:
Overnight leadership hikes
Lunch bunch group
Fun family outings
Middle & High School Students:
Host after school and evening activities to give students opportunities to socialize outside the classroom setting
Provide leadership opportunities for students such as - peer led discussions, weekend leadership retreats and workshops, and student groups
Scholarships for students with financial needs to participate in overseas school trips
Support for service projects or academic competitions that expressly serve to bring METCO students, resident students of color, and white resident students together
The Reality
While segregation within the city is a problem, segregation between the city and the suburbs is an even bigger one. This is BBI’s driving force in how we aim to make impact on the current social climate.
Want to Learn More on This Issue?
Parent Organizations
Boston Bridges Initiative will work with parent groups to support learning and relationship building.
“As Massachusetts is becoming more diverse, students of color are becoming more racially isolated in urban schools....Major change, especially outside the Commonwealth’s largest cities, will only come through bold state support and continued public advocacy.”
School Integration In Massachusetts: Racial Diversity and State Accountability, Summer 2020
Peek Inside the Program!
Elementary Students: “Stay and Play”
Provide cross-racial opportunities for families to get to know each other in suburban and Boston communities
After school play dates and activities - from games and crafts to story reading and more!
Elementary and Secondary Students
Trips to cultural events, museums, sporting events
Parent Book Club and Workshops
Learn how to talk to your children about race
Parents choose engaging books and have open dialogues
Encourage, support, and educate parents on how to have meaningful, open, and often difficult conversations regarding race
Meetings, workshops, seminars, and classes to facilitate cross-racial understanding
Parent Dinner and Mixers
Cultivate meaningful multicultural/multiracial relationships betweens parents that extend to the families