Grand Aspirations has two methods to support you to make change your community.

Summer of Solutions is an opportunity for you to make change in a community that matters to you. Summer of Solutions programs look different from place to place, but they are all bound together by a commitment to empowering young people to take action on social justice, community-directed action, environmental sustainability, and building economic prosperity. Summer of Solutions is an established program of Grand Aspirations. 2013 will be the 6th Summer of Solutions.

You can read about past Summer of Solutions programs here: http://grandaspirations.org/summer/2012-programs/

Summer of Solutions programs focus on empowering young people between the ages of 14-30 (some programs have narrower age ranges) to accomplish real outcomes that are relevant to the local community. Grand Aspirations has five years of experience running Summer of Solutions programs and will provide you with the support you need to run an effective, transformative program for your community.

Local Initiatives are a new venture of Grand Aspirations. Local Initiatives (LIs) are designed to help support you to do effective, year round work that engages social justice, environmental sustainability, community needs, and economic prosperity.  Teams who run Local Initiatives will design projects that advance local community solutions that have the potential to grow and expand in other communities. Grand Aspirations will support a small number of "pilot" Local Initiatives to create innovative project models and grow towards self-sufficiency.

Please review the guidelines Summer of Solutions and Local Initiatives, which are designed to offer you support and structure to accomplish your program goals. Note that this document contains different sets of guidelines for the two programs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NdbcBe7rXqKGln9b5OZCLmtDLhaSqdrJLTuhT3TK6Yc/edit

If you would like to run a Summer of Solutions program and a Local Initiative, that's great! check the box below.

Note that one guideline is to have 2 program leaders identified when you submit this application, so find at least one team-mate to apply with if you haven't already.

The position of being a program leader, or a person who runs a Summer of Solutions program or a Local Initiative, has largely been volunteer up to this point. However, there are some need-based stipends available for program leaders through Grand Aspirations. These stipends will be awarded with a preference for people from low-income and minority backgrounds, and who are working in low-income and minority communities. Grand Aspirations can also support you to fundraise for your own stipends if you are accepted as a program. Stipends are available for both SoS and LIs.

Your level of need for stipends will not be taken into account when deciding whether or not to accept your application to be a program.

The deadline to apply to be a new Summer of Solutions program HAS BEEN EXTENDED to  November 12th, 2012. You will hear back by November 23rd, 2012 whether your program has been accepted and, if you have applied for a stipend, whether you have received a stipend. Applications to become a Local Initiative will remain open on an ongoing basis: those local Initiatives that apply by November 12th 2012 will hear back from us by November 23rd and will be eligible for currently available funding. Local Initiatives that apply after this deadline will hear back from us on a rolling basis, and financial support may or may not be available based on future fundraising.

This online application cannot be saved and returned to, and it will not provide you with a record of your responses after you submit. This is an in-depth application that will require substantial time and thought. You may wish to save the questions and edit them in a word document or other text editor and then just copy-paste them at the end. You can view a Word document copy with all the questions to prepare your application before submitting at http://bit.ly/UrGyXq