2025 Microgrants Build Community, Confidence, and Skills
A local family receives backpacks filled with school supplies at Swanson Family Academy’s August 9 back-to-school event, funded by a 2025 microgrant from A Wider Circle.
By Maggie Fox
One will pay for a series of workshops about how to build a business. Another will help young people learn financial literacy. Yet another will teach self-defense, and more than a few plan a party or two.
A Wider Circle has awarded nine community microgrants for 2025. The grants, which range from $1,200 to $2,500, are meant to be small and hyper-local to the Washington Highlands neighborhood in Ward 8, where A Wider Circle has had partnerships and presence for more than nine years, although some of the grantees have ambitions beyond that.
“The impact for a very low-level investment is incredible,” said Amy Javaid, President and CEO of A Wider Circle.
Youth in Soulutionary, Inc.’s financial literacy, STEM, and coding program (funded by a 2025 microgrant) attend a field trip to iFly Indoor Skydiving.
The microgrant program started in 2021. This year’s grantees include:
- Neverblackdown, which hopes to teach entrepreneurship skills to 25 to 40 school-aged youth via E.P.U Printing, a D.C.-based T-shirt and banner printing business.
- Project Empowerment Exposure & Purpose, whose PEEP This! Summer Camp aims to provide 10-13-year-olds “a transformative experience” with art, culture, team-building, and conflict resolution.
- DC Black Dragon Martial Arts, which will host a series of self-defense classes at A Wider Circle’s Ward 8 hub.
- Miracle Girlz plans a community-centered event that honors Black history and resilience while addressing gun violence and mental health.
- Soulutionary Inc., whose financial literacy, STEM, and coding program aims to couple academic concepts with real-world applications of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to help youth from 6 to 21 manage money better.
- Swanson Family Academy’s Bring Back the Village campaign held a series of events at Highland Dwellings, including workshops, arts-based healing sessions, and a back-to-school event where school-aged kids got backpacks filled with school supplies and residents turned out for lunch cooked on the grill and music. In one workshop, 18 unemployed adults put together resumes and participated in mock interviews.
- LeadDC Youth Empower is led by a recent Thurgood Marshall Academy high school graduate who hopes to provide mentorship, skill-building workshops, and organized trips to places like Dave & Buster’s and other educational and recreational venues for fun and friendship. His plan is to expand the program city-wide eventually.
- Highland Resident Council plans ongoing activities for seniors in the community. Each event would be simple, with food, drinks, games such as bingo, and the opportunity to mingle and socialize. The goal would be to build community and give people a chance to feel safe leaving their homes.
- A nonprofit administrator plans a one-time workshop for 20-30 no- or low-income people to help them find job opportunities or business funding sources after receiving basic business entrepreneurship training.
The microgrant program, paid for by one of A Wider Circle’s consistent funders, is based on a similar, international concept, said Javaid. Sometimes, she said, a little money can go a long way, especially when the local community decides how it is spent.
And that’s just how these grants are allocated, said YaVonne Boyd, Director of A Wider Circle’s Ward 8 Hub.
“Members of the community actually make the decision. It’s not A Wider Circle who determines who gets the funding. We have an independent set of grant reviewers, so we’re removed from the process, which is wonderful, because these are people who are very familiar with the needs of the community,” she said.
We hope to profile individual grantees and their projects in future blog posts. Keep an eye out!
Maggie Fox is a journalist and volunteer with A Wider Circle.
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