Tom Gill, Jacqueline Gillon, Stephanie Buda and Shelly Gracon are thinking outside the box to make their communities stronger. They are this year's #Fresh4, recognized by the Cleveland Leadership Center and FreshWater Cleveland as innovators who are making a difference.

Randell McShepard told a sold-out City Club audience Aug. 16 that the perceived shortage of black leaders is due to a lack of opportunities to be heard. “Minorities shouldn't have to be in protest mode to get the opportunity to speak publicly,” he says.

Meet the local heroes working to restore a sense of safety in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood.

Third Space co-founder Evelyn Burnett says the point of the workshops is simple: to build awareness around racial equity and inequity. More than 3,000 people from 700 organizations have attended the trainings, which are now offered monthly.

Each year, Cuyahoga County receives approximately 50,000 calls through the Child Abuse Hotline at the Division of Child and Family Services, according to the county website. These calls report acts of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect to children throughout Northeast Ohio. Nationally, abuse affects three million children annually, and causes the death of about four children every day.

From a dynamic duo bringing back Glenville to a Sudanese designer working on a welcome center for Irishtown Bend, these artists are changing the city's creative landscape.

Fifty years after the Cuyahoga River caught fire, Case Western Reserve University School of Law Student Allison Meyer is demonstrating how Clevelanders continue to persist no matter the struggles they encounter.

In Cuyahoga County, the infant mortality rate for African-American babies is 15.1 per every 1,000 live births, compared to 3.8 for white babies. In other words, Cleveland's black babies are approximately four times more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies.

The neighborhood restaurant will reopen this month under the West Side Catholic Center using the EDWINS model of employing formerly-incarcerated adults.

 

Cleveland's decades-long lead poisoning epidemic has dominated policy and community debates in recent years. The concern is warranted: Each day, four Cleveland children are poisoned by inhaling or ingesting lead dust—putting our city's childhood lead poisoning rate at four times the national average.

Earlier in June, Cleveland's newly minted chapter of the Awesome Foundation selected its first two grantees: BigHearted Blooms and Building Furniture to Build Futures. Both initiatives were awarded $1,000 by the recently formed group of 25 Awesome Foundation–Cleveland Chapter trustees—helping to turn two impactful ideas into reality.

You likely know the unelected, unsung leaders in your community. They’re the ones volunteering at local events, spreading the word in online neighborhood groups, leading grassroots initiatives, and giving voice to residents who might not otherwise have one. But what you—and they—might not know is that there’s a free program dedicated to helping them harness their superpowers and make even more of an impact.

If she could afford a car, Antaneshia Fletcher could drive to her job at Bloom Bakery in less than 20 minutes. Instead, she rises at 4:30 am every day so she can spend two hours taking the two bus routes necessary to travel from her home in Euclid to the store near the Cleveland State University campus by 6:30 am.

During a recent afternoon ceremony at the Halle Building, the mood was celebratory and inspiring as five local organizations received $5,000 grants in support of youth-geared initiatives. Even cooler? The benefactors are ambitious, civic-minded high school juniors and seniors who spent nine months serving on United Way of Greater Cleveland's John K. Mott Youth Fund Distribution Committee.