By STEVE FREKER
MEDFORD – The Medford Public Schools and a local organization that is one of the oldest historical associations in the region are among six locally-based recipients of $100,000 grants from the Cummings Foundation.
School Superintendent Roy Belson accepted the school grants. Cummings awarded $100,000 to the Royall House Association, a historical group that maintains the 400-plus-year-old Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters on George Street in South Medford.
Other Medford grant recipients are the Medford-based Boston Shakespeare Project; Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine; Solutions for Living and Tufts College Bioinformatics.
Medford Public Schools will use its $100,000 to provide instructional resources, activities, coordination, and training to support its mission of developing responsible global citizens.
Royall House Association will supplement its mostly volunteer workforce with short-term paid expertise in preservation, youth education, collections management, and diversity.
Tufts College Bioinformatics will use its money to support Tufts’ summer bioinformatics course and to bring science fair and classroom projects to low-income students from local urban communities.
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine @ Tufts University will devote its grant to support the creation of a multi-purpose teaching and simulation lab to enhance clinical skills teaching and hands-on learning.
The Boston Shakespeare Project will spend Cummings money to sustain and expand mentoring and literacy enrichment programs in the Somerville, Medford, and Boston areas.
Solutions for Living will use its grant to provide bicultural students in Lynn with opportunities to share their experiences and educate others about the challenges and rewards faced by recent immigrants.
“Nonprofit organizations like these six serving Medford are vital to the local communities where our colleagues and clients live and work,” said Joel Swets, Cummings Foundation’s executive director. “We are delighted to invest in their efforts.”
The grants are part of the sixth annual “$100K for 100” program. Cummings reviewed 549 applications and picked 100 regional nonprofit organizations as winners of the total $10 million donation.
The awards bring Cummings’ generosity up to $170 million to date awarded to nonprofits.
Cummings grants are usually paid out over a two- to five-year period. An outline on cummingsfoundation.org summarizes the grants.
The Cummings Foundation is affiliated with Cummings Properties. Founded in 1970 by Bill Cummings of Winchester, the Woburn-based commercial real estate firm leases and manages 11 million square feet of space that benefits the Foundation.
The complete list of 100 grant winners is available at www.CummingsFoundation.org.
