Enhancing Opportunity in Indianapolis is a Lilly Endowment initiative designed to help individuals and families facing complex and varied challenges associated with poverty make progress toward lasting economic self-sufficiency. Through this initiative, the Endowment awarded grants totaling $93.6 million to support highly-collaborative projects.
Grants were awarded to 28 Indianapolis-based organizations that are working with a wide variety of community partners and local employers. View the grants list here.
The Endowment launched Enhancing Opportunity in 2019, inviting organizations to propose ideas for new projects or how to strengthen existing efforts that could:
- Help individuals seek and acquire good jobs (paying at least $18 an hour with healthcare benefits) or promising jobs.
- Address barriers to economic prosperity that disproportionately affect Black and Latino residents.
- Help children and youth be prepared for in-demand jobs and success in higher education.
- Focus on the needs of residents in high-poverty neighborhoods.
- Help residents who face challenges in addition to poverty – youth aging out of foster care, individuals with disabilities, members of immigrant communities with language barriers and individuals who are reentering their communities after incarceration.
Although the Endowment acknowledges that the efforts funded through this initiative will not end poverty in Indianapolis, it does hope that they will help put thousands of Indianapolis residents on the path to self-sufficiency.
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