Strengthen ND of Minot is among 28 organizations from 18 states and the District of Columbia to receive $100,000 in the Voices for Economic Opportunity Grand Challenge, sponsored by eight philanthropic organizations.

The grants were awarded to broaden the national conversation about poverty and economic mobility at a critical moment in the nation’s history, according to information from the Grand Challenge program. The challenge comes in light of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic early this year and the recent outrage against racial injustice. With tens of millions of people newly unemployed, many of them people of color, and many facing racism, there is a need to break down the dominant perceptions about poverty and to replace them with more accurate ones, challenge sponsors state.

Through the Threads of Homesteading project, Strengthen ND will encourage North Dakotans experiencing poverty to take up the rich local tradition of homesteading by using stories to connect the diverse populations of new residents and long-time rural residents.

Homesteading was the original mode of economic mobility for European migrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. The recent energy boom brought more families from around the world, including from refugee camps, creating a more diverse population not fully sufficient in terms of opportunities for economic growth. This community now suffers from misconceptions and stereotypes, making it harder for them to improve their economic status. In an effort to change that, new residents will be invited to incorporate their stories of seeking opportunity with those of the homesteading families connected to long-time residents to spark a statewide conversation between residents and stakeholders and promote acceptance.

The grantees will gather over the next 18 months as a cohort to collaborate and learn from one another; receive access to research, coaching and other technical support; and incubate their individual projects, with an eye toward production and distribution of prototypes by the fall of 2021. The incubation effort will be led by Purpose, a social impact agency and public benefit corporation.

The purpose of the Grand Challenge, launched in September 2019, is to establish ways to offer alternatives to confusing, conflicting, and just plain inaccurate accounts about what poverty is, why it happens, to whom it happens, and how to address it. Key partners on the project have included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Omidyar Network, Raikes Foundation, Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and the Schultz Family Foundation.

The Grand Challenge is part of a multi-year plan to examine economic mobility and opportunity in this country, to create tools to help everyone better understand the systemic factors that lead to the presence of greater economic mobility in their own neighborhoods and to craft and test strategies for changing the outlook for people experiencing poverty.

Grantees were selected from 1,225 submissions made last fall and represent a broad cross-section of geographies, cultures, media and scope of ideas. Eligible applications were rated by a panel of more than 30 external experts with experience in film and media, social movements and non-profits, narrative and culture change, philanthropy, economics and social science. Their recommendations were then presented to the partners for final grantee selections.