Children are often the focus of many charitable organizations, and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation is very active in striving to “assure that all children have an equitable and promising future –– a nation in which all children thrive.” Will Keith Kellogg, founder of the Kellogg’s food manufacturing company, initially started the foundation in 1930 to support Michigan children; the Michigan Community Health Project also provided cooperation in this initiative. With $7.2 billion in assets, according to the Foundation Center, the foundation continues to work in its home state of Michigan, but also operates in Latin America, the Caribbean, southern Africa, and the rest of the United States. The foundation classifies its activities in the following ways: leading dialogue, sustaining communities, investing in opportunity, sharing expertise, and advocating change. Grants are awarded to organizations and individuals who endorse children’s education and health, secure families, racial equality, and civic engagement.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
