Lazano’s journey started with Juma Ventures, a unique social entrepreneurial program based in San Francisco that hires youth from low income and at risk communities to work stadium concessions. Juma offers job training and mentoring for college-bound students; 97 percent of its participants graduate high school and 96 percent enroll in higher education. With no money for college, Lazano had resigned herself to a low-paying retail position. She also was afraid the job field would not offer her the support she needs—and receives—from her bosses at Juma to be a successful student, which includes adjusting her work schedule around classes and study time as well as her little brother’s Friday night football games. When Lazano started working for Juma two years ago, completing a job training program before landing a position at Levi’s upon its first preseason game in August 2014 and later Avaya stadium, home to the San Jose Earthquakes, her situation changed. Lazano graduated from James Lick High School in East San Jose in May, and started classes at Mission College in Santa Clara this past fall. “It’s just great. I can’t even find the words to describe it,” Lazano says. “I feel like I would be lost without Juma. This job is everything to me.” It’s success stories like Lazano’s that resulted in Juma receiving one of the first $500,000 Game Changer Grants from The 50 Fund, the philanthropic arm of the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee. Before a football even soars across the field in the game’s first kickoff, The 50 Fund will have distributed more than $3.6 million in grants to Bay Area nonprofits, with more grants awarded in the weeks and months after the game’s fireworks fade away. The grand total is expected to be somewhere between $10 million and $15 million— 50 South Bay Accent the most ever donated in connection with a Super Bowl. For Juma Ventures, a $500,000 grant is a game changer. It not only means continued support for students such as Lazano, it also means expanding programs that help local students graduate high school and pursue the dream of a college education. “The Super Bowl 50 Fund’s Game Changer award is a golden stamp of recognition for Juma’s social innovations and achievements in closing the opportunity gap for Bay Area youth from low-income Jason Trimiew of the Super Bowl 50 Host backgrounds,” says Juma CEO Marc Spencer. “The fund’s contribution is helping the agency build capacity to serve more youth, thus increasing our impact.” That impact is what The 50 Fund is all about, say its leaders. They want to take the attention that Super Bowl 50 brings to the Bay Area and transform it into lasting benefits for the youth and communities of our region. Along the way, The 50 Fund is changing the very face of sports philanthropy by upping the ante on how money is raised and distributed in conjunction with future Super Bowls, Olympics and other largescale sporting events. A WHOLE NEW BALL GAME From the moment the NFL awarded the San Francisco Bay Area the 50th anniversary Super Bowl in May 2013, Host Committee Chair Daniel Lurie declared it to be the “most giving” Super Bowl in history. And Keith Bruce, the Host Committee’s CEO, announced Super Bowl 50 would be “net positive”—a new business practice focused on giving back to the community—philanthropically, economically and environmentally. Philanthropy is front and center in that net positive approach. Lurie, founder of the Tipping Point Community, one of the Bay Area’s largest charities, said $40 million was raised to make Super Bowl 50 a reality, and an extraordinary 25 percent of those funds were given to charity by the Host Committee. That expectation of donating a full quarter of the funds raised became central to the Host Committee, according to VP of Community Relations Jason Trimiew. “The opportunity we really have is to take all the momentum of a Super Bowl 50 and shine a spotlight on the good Commitee. work that’s being done every day here in the Bay Area,” he says. It’s common for the NFL Foundation to offer a $1 million matching grant to a host city, resulting in $2 million raised for the region’s nonprofits, but the goal of Super Bowl 50 is unprecedented in the history of the game. The New York/New Jersey host committee raised the bar in 2014, with Super Bowl XLVIII, awarding an estimated $10 million in grants—about 10 percent of what was raised to finance the game. “It just jumped out that if we want to invest in the future and leave a positive, lasting legacy, then centering around youth made a lot of sense,” Tshionyi says. SCOTT CHERNIS; PREVIOUS SPREAD; CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF DAISY LAZANO; PATRICK TEHAN/BAY AREA NEWS GROUP, COPYRIGHT 2010 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP, PATRICK TEHAN AND SJMN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; COURTESY OF JUMA VENTURES; COURTESY OF JUMA VENTURES; COURTESY OF ALEARN
South Bay Accent - Dec 2015/Jan 2016
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