Mini grants support grassroots innovation in Palm Beach County, helping to address critical challenges and opportunities at the local level. They help launch small businesses, support professional growth, and fund solutions to some of our toughest problems — from promoting intergenerational wealth and health, to addressing trauma, family caregiving, and root causes of violence.
This page brings together key information about our mini grant initiatives, highlighting unique projects supported through Healthier Neighbors mini grants and BeWellPBC mini grants. Together, these stories show how small investments can spark big impact and inspire healthier futures for Palm Beach County.
Explore the stories below and see how our community members turned ideas into action.
In addition to reading the narratives below, visuals showing how community members interpreted their narratives are presented in the Data Visuals page.
Local leaders and community members involved in mini-grant projects were given the following prompt:
Share a story about a mini grant experience.
Your story can be something, anything that happened related to a mini-grant. It doesn’t have to prove anything—we are not looking to grade anyone. It can be something rare and meaningful or something that happens every day. The more stories, the more people who tell stories, the better we can represent who you are and what you do.
We hope your stories can help us understand more about mini-grants, how they help, what the challenges are while getting to know the people behind them and connected to them.
The Stories
This mini grant experience has allowed Youth Empowered to Prosper to roll out a vision that the Director has had to enrich youth in Palm Beach County. Future Leaders Prep Course is designed for high schoolers and youth up to age 22 that focuses on leadership development, financial awareness and job preparedness. This course is designed to provide knowledge and tools for life after high school. We will achieve this through destiny activation development courses that focus on purpose, leadership, entrepreneurship, financial awareness, internships/apprenticeships, career exploration and the like. The goal of these courses is to equip our next generation with self-awareness and knowledge to help make better decisions as productive and responsible leaders in the community.
October 10 is World Mental Health Day each year and this year New Song Church hosted the first Mental Health & The Church Conference in partnership with Palm Beach Atlantic University School of Education & Behavioral Studies.New Song Church was proud to receive $2000 for the 2020 HN granting term. We used those funds as part of the Mental Health and the Church Virtual Conference which was held from 9-4 pm with an after party at 7:30 pm. The conference had 50 people registered (13 of those were youth). The goal of the conference was connecting spirituality and mental health care for diverse communities. This conference was unique in that it also included giving a scholarship of $1,000 to a local Palm Beach Atlantic University (PBA) Student studying Mental Health Counseling as well as 20 sessions of free counseling to community residents (Covered by the other $1000 from grant $1000). This year Valery Hildago was selected as the scholarship winner. She has a 4.0 GPA at PBA and is eager to support communities of color in mental health counseling. Coach Debbie serves as our Mental Health ministry Leader and coordinated the New Song Mental Health & The Church Conference to…