Ascension Catholic Academy is a consortium of four Catholic schools (currently St. Peter Claver, St. John Paul II, Ascension, and St. Pascal Regional) that center racial equity and unleash scholar potential in the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area.  
 
GHR partnered with the Academy to help two schools (Ascension and St. Peter Claver) meet state requirements to open childcare centers on their campuses. Beginning in September 2022, this funding expands ACA’s Early Childhood Learning Center (ECLC) initiative to all four schools in the Academy, ensuring that regular classrooms being converted over to ECLC spaces are up to code, equipped with the necessary furniture and learning materials, and are spaces families and scholars can be proud of and excited to learn in. 
 
Expanding the initiative provides families in the most underserved communities access to early childhood learning solutions. Close to 75% of kindergartners at ACA schools enter the classroom with no pre-k experience. Ensuring scholars are kindergarten ready is crucial to their holistic, long-term success. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on childcare programs, with many being forced to close permanently. The lack of affordable, high-quality ECLC programs has forced many parents and guardians to forgo returning to the workforce, risking their financial security. Opening two new childcare centers at these schools will offer families in the community much needed relief.  

Early childhood learning is an essential component of closing the education opportunity gap, a key aspect of GHR’s Local Domain strategy. Through this partnership, we anticipate improved academic outcomes for the ECLC scholars entering kindergarten, as well as stronger retention of families and scholars moving from pre-K to K-8 classrooms.  
 
GHR works to design new and replicable models for high-quality Catholic education. Learn more about this work here.

From USAID:

"Today, on the margins of the UN General Assembly, Administrator Samantha Power and leaders of philanthropic organizations announced the endorsement of the Donor Statement on Supporting Locally Led Development by 15 foundations, representing a major milestone in building a global coalition of funders who are committed to advancing locally led development. 

The philanthropic organizations endorsing the Donor Statement include: Fundación Avina, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, Ford Foundation, GHR Foundation, Humanity United, Imaginable Futures, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, McKnight Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Segal Family Foundation, Skoll Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Council on Foundations also supports the statement, and has played an important role in advancing locally-led development in the philanthropic community.

The donor statement, which outlines actions to foster locally sustained change that is tied to each country’s unique context, was first announced on December 13, 2022, at the Effective Development Cooperation Summit in Geneva, Switzerland. At that time, 15 donor countries, including USAID, endorsed the statement. Since then, three additional countries – Denmark, Slovenia and Sweden – have endorsed the statement, bringing the total number to 18. 

The endorsements of philanthropic organizations to the donor statement demonstrates the resonance of the commitments in the statement: to shift and share power, to work to channel high quality funding as directly as possible, and to publicly advocate for locally led development. 

To learn more about USAID’s efforts to ensure our work puts local actors in the lead, strengthens local systems, and is responsive to local communities, visit usaid.gov/localization."

Read the Donor Statement on Supporting Locally Led Development here. 

GHR Foundation has a long history of partnering with Catholic sisters. We draw insight and inspiration from sisters, whose leadership, service, and spiritual witness have advanced the common good through a profound commitment to working on behalf of the vulnerable and marginalized. 
  
GHR’s Sister Support Initiative (SSI) has focused on ensuring a vital future for Catholic sisters, marked by congregations that are well-led, well-resourced and powerful in spiritual witness, leadership, and service. The SSI has helped women religious build a path toward a new future by fostering opportunities for creativity, resilience, reinvigoration, and a sense of confidence as they strike out on a journey of transformation. 
  
Read the full Evaluation Report of the Sister Support Initiative to learn more. 

C2N Diagnostics’ Alzheimer's blood test was introduced into the clinic in October of 2020, a breakthrough healthcare innovation for patients, advocates, and physicians who have long awaited an easy to administer test that can help them better understand Alzheimer’s disease. C2N developed this groundbreaking test based upon longtime GHR partner Dr. Randall Bateman’s initial discovery of how to measure amyloid proteins in blood, validating its results in a clinical trial of 686 patients. 

From C2N Diagnostics: ​

"C2N Diagnostics, a leader in advanced brain health diagnostics, today announced the release of the PrecivityAD2 blood test, a clinical care assay that meets the standard of care with currently available PET scans and cerebrospinal fluid tests. This blood test is designed to alleviate the bottleneck and unmet needs of healthcare providers and patients in evaluating patients with signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other causes of cognitive decline. 

'We believe the PrecivityAD2 test represents the next generation in blood biomarker tests and will help establish a new standard in Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis. The 2022 Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease Task Force report outlined that combined biomarkers can be especially helpful in avoiding misdiagnosis, and PrecivityAD2 does just that by harnessing two established biomarkers in one assay. We believe the test addresses a major unmet need for an accurate, safe, non-invasive, and accessible alternative to amyloid PET scans and lumbar punctures,' says Dr. Joel Braunstein, C2N’s president and CEO. 'This announcement is timely with the approval of new disease modifying therapies and others on the way along with the ability for healthcare providers to more easily refer patients to sites or to mobile phlebotomists where their blood can be drawn for diagnosis.'"

Read the full press release here. 

The A4 Study was the first large-scale clinical trial testing an Alzheimer’s prevention strategy in the general population. It aimed to slow cognitive decline in older persons who were not cognitively impaired but had elevated amyloid levels and were thus at high risk for cognitive decline. The A4 Study tested whether solanezumab, an anti-amyloid drug, could slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease-related cognitive decline. 
 
Solanezumab did not slow cognitive decline as compared to placebo. Additional learnings from the trial will continue to be shared as future analyses are completed, including results from the companion study - LEARN. 

Read the published results of the A4 study in the New England Journal of Medicine. 
 
Background on the A4 Study 
The A4 Study is a landmark public-private partnership, funded by the National Institute on Aging (part of National Institutes of Health), Eli Lilly and Company, Alzheimer's Association, GHR Foundation, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, and several other organizations and donors. The A4 Study is coordinated by the Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute (ATRI) at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California and is a project of the Alzheimer's Clinical Trials Consortium (ACTC).

​From ECFG: 

"In 2022, ECFG commissioned Degan Ali and her team to lead us through a decolonizing grantmaking journey that included learning webinars, collective learning and reflection, the identification of promising practices, and the development of a framework that funders could use to elevate equitable grantmaking. After developing an understanding of our network’s needs and goals, our decolonizing philanthropy working group engaged in deep partnership design with DA Global to create The Decolonizing Child and Youth Philanthropy Framework.

This framework recognizes that our members and partners are at different stages of their journey in tackling colonialism within their organizations and grantmaking. While there are universally relevant lessons gained from existing decolonization efforts in the philanthropic and charity sectors, this framework is designed to support the different types, sizes and needs of the funders who belong to this group. This is not a magic solution, but a tool in our decolonizing child and youth philanthropy toolbox. This tool is intentionally focused on supporting those who have embarked on a change process within their organizations, those who want to make additional adjustments, and those who are grappling with how to get started."

Download the framework here. 

From Leadership Roundtable:

"Welcome to the Catholic Leaders Podcast! In this episode, our Executive Partners Kim Smolik and Kerry Robinson sit down with Amy Goldman, CEO and Chair of GHR Foundation. Kim, Kerry, and Amy talk about philanthropic work, Pope Francis’ leadership, and the power of working together as a co-responsible Church.​"

Listen here. 

GHR is thrilled to welcome Tenzin Tseten as program associate for the Local domain at GHR. Tenzin’s unique gifts, skills and experience promise to sustain our ongoing commitment to supporting the essential work of our Local partners. As a program associate, Tenzin is responsible for supporting administrative coordination as well as quality grantmaking, documentation, and partnerships for the Local team.

Tenzin previously worked in various capacities at the State of Wisconsin. Most recently, she was a grant manager for the Wisconsin Fast Forward program, managing workforce development grants through their full grant life cycle. Tenzin has a background in grant and contract management, program evaluation and public administration, and has a passion for economic and community development.
​
Tenzin has a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a master's from Central European University.

Neighborhood Development Center (NDC) is a non-profit organization that offers training, lending, and technical assistance to community entrepreneurs in the Twin Cities. Aiming to "empower entrepreneurs and community partners to transform their low-income neighborhood economies from within”, NDC addresses barriers to economic equity by equipping neighborhood entrepreneurs with the knowledge and resources they need to start, run, and grow their own businesses, within the neighborhood where they live.

Via a $750,000 grant, GHR is supporting the multiple NDC services provided within Black and Latina Opportunity Connect (BLOC) – a structured, individualized one-on-one coaching and cohort support program. BLOC participants will receive Money Matters and Mindset Reset training, technical assistance programs offered by NDC’s Business Lab, as well as access to the Credit Up! Program, focused on credit building loans and credit education. Money Matters focuses on participants’ financial literacy and provides them with a year of QuickBooks bookkeeping software. Mindset Reset is a culturally responsive program that helps participants address mindset challenges to their personal and business success, such as self-limiting beliefs, imposter syndrome, and burnout. Credit Up! is housed in NDC’s Lending program and provides a small loan and credit coaching to help boost participants’ credit scores.

Access to these programs is accompanied and guided by expert business coaches who meet monthly with BLOC participants, checking in and supporting progress toward their goals, such as the completion of a business plan or meeting certain sales targets. GHR funding helps NDC secure expert business coaches who are also business plan consultants. Consultants help participants refine and build out their business plans, which are a key tool for guiding the future of the business and securing capital, including loan capital provided by GHR.

BLOC on the Block is a new concept that will provide BLOC participants space to test out their business concept at a bricks-and-mortar location, before they secure a storefront of their own. NDC will build out a storefront space, likely at their Frogtown Crossroads small business incubator in St. Paul, where BLOC participants will hold pop-up sales events.

NDC President & CEO Renay Dossman shared, “the Black and Latina Opportunity to Connect (BLOC) program was born because we found a gap. Black and Latina women were coming to NDC and completing our entrepreneur training program at very high rates—but very few continued on and opened a business. BLOC was designed to ensure Black & Latina women could equitably grow their businesses, create wealth, and shape their communities”.
​
Within our Local domain, GHR works to be of service to and in partnership with Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) businesses and communities in the development and acquisition of assets that advance and provide access to economic opportunity and community development, and education and career advancement. Learn more about our work.

"Treating Alzheimer’s patients as early as possible — when symptoms and brain pathology are mildest — provides a better chance of slowing cognitive decline, a large study of an experimental Alzheimer’s drug presented Monday suggests. The study of 1,736 patients reported that the drug, donanemab, made by Eli Lilly, can modestly slow the progression of memory and thinking problems in early stages of Alzheimer’s, and that the slowing was greatest for early-stage patients when they had less of a protein that creates tangles in the brain."

Read more.