Six nonprofits doing critical work for child welfare, crisis response and the environment receive grants for $25,000
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Box, Inc. (NYSE: BOX), the leading Content Cloud, today announced the grantees of the Box Impact Fund, which provides grants for digital transformation to nonprofit organizations doing critical work in the areas of child welfare, crisis response and the environment. The six grantees, including ChildFund Mexico, HERA Digital Health, IT WILL BE, Mobile Pathways, Replate, and Wastezon, each will receive grants for $25,000 – totaling $150,000.
“At Box, we power how the world works together, and leading positive change has always been paramount to that mission,” said Corrie Conrad, Executive Director of Box.org and VP, Communities and Impact at Box. “This is why today we are thrilled to support six incredible organizations with digital transformation grants from the Box Impact Fund. We are proud to be enabling these organizations that are doing critical work in our Box.org focus areas of child welfare, crisis response and the environment to achieve their incredibly important missions.”
The Box Impact Fund Recipients
ChildFund Mexico connects children, adolescents, and youth in Mexico, living in situations of deprivation, exclusion, and vulnerability, with everything they need to grow up safe, healthy, and educated.
“We will use this grant to improve the communication experience between our sponsors and their sponsored children. It will evolve our current postal letter system into the digital world. By developing a multi-device application, we will provide them with a virtual space to exchange messages, drawings, photographs, and postcards. This will strengthen their bond. Children will share their magical moments in a more impactful way. For us, it will represent a tremendous time saving, which we will reinvest in innovating the management and cultivation of our sponsors and designing the scaling of our operation,” said Alejandro Guerrero, Sponsorship Manager, ChildFund Mexico.
IT WILL BE combats poverty globally through social innovation and technology. Their project for the protection of street children includes breakthrough technology called Child PPa. It uses palm vein recognition for identification and has proven more accurate in children than other approaches.
“The Box Impact Fund grant will allow us to improve and scale our use of Child PPa technology. In addition, we will train the social workers involved in the project in digital skills to guarantee success in the implementation. This grant assures us that we can continue working with the aim of finding an effective solution to give digital identity to minors at risk and allows us to be a solid use case to share with other NGOs that may replicate the project in the future,” said Arancha Martínez, Founder and President, IT WILL BE.
HERA Digital Health helps refugees access healthcare in their locality through a simple, open-sourced mobile platform, regardless of where they are in the world.
“As a digital health organization, growth of our technical capacity directly influences our potential to reach more refugees and ensure they have access to healthcare. This digital transformation grant helps us achieve just that by increasing our in-house tech talent,” said Aral Surmeli, MD MPH, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, HERA.
Mobile Pathways is the bridge connecting immigrants to advocates and services via trusted mobile technology. We partner with immigration-based nonprofits and attorneys to reach the vast and diverse population of marginalized immigrants.
“Everyone has the right to choose their own path and future. Being a global leader, the U.S. has the obligation to get to know those who are knocking on its door and adjudicate their request in an appropriate and timely manner. With this grant, Mobile Pathways will continue to digitally transform immigration advocates to scale their reach and ensure every immigrant can get fair access to justice,” said Poesy Chen, Innovation Director, Mobile Pathways.
Replate is a technology-driven nonprofit that aims to reduce food waste and counter climate change in California and beyond. The platform enables businesses to donate surplus meals to nonprofits serving communities experiencing food insecurity, and provides tools designed for food waste prevention through source reduction.
“This grant will allow us to further our work in the community by enhancing our food waste reduction tools, which aim to create behavioral change in how businesses address food surplus. During 2022, we revolutionized our approach to food recovery by building a source reduction tool that measures and tracks trends in businesses’ food surplus. These insights can be used to inform practices that reduce food waste over time. Our goal is to expand upon this product in order to further measure, track, and evaluate its success, and increase our impact on the environment,” said Maen Mahfoud, Founder and CEO, Replate.
Wastezon provides a digital solution that powers manufacturers and consumers with real-time mineralogical traceability data to inform effective material reuse, repurposing and recycling. So far Wastezon has facilitated the traceability and transaction of over 600 tons of electronic materials in East Africa, diverting an equivalent of over 5100 tons of carbon emissions.
“The Box Impact Fund will catalyze our user base growth while also simultaneously allowing us to scale our climate impact. This is a great boost to our vision of championing a circular and climate-resilient economy in Africa,” said Ghislain Irakoze, CEO, Wastezon.
Box Gives Back
Box provides more than 10,500 nonprofit organizations with the capacity-building resources they need to innovate and fulfill their missions. Over the past year, Box has provided in-kind over $34 million through Box product discounting and product donation to nonprofits. In addition to offering donated or discounted access to Box’s Content Cloud, Box.org, Box’s philanthropic arm, builds nonprofit capacity through employee-led volunteering and giving programs, coalition building and good business practices. Box maintains a Donor Advised Fund (DAF) at Tides Foundation and the Box Impact Fund is funded through this DAF. 75% of Box employees engage in causes they care about throughout the year with Box nonprofit partners, like local CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) organizations, International Rescue Committee, The Nature Conservancy, and more. These social impact efforts are important contributors to Box’s company culture which has been recognized most recently by Great Place to Work as one of the Best Workplaces for Parents, and recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the 40 Best Large Workplaces in Technology and 100 Best Large Workplaces for Women for 2022.
To learn more visit the Box blog.
About Box
Box (NYSE:BOX) is the leading Content Cloud, a single platform that empowers organizations to manage the entire content lifecycle, work securely from anywhere, and integrate across best-of-breed apps. Founded in 2005, Box simplifies work for leading global organizations, including AstraZeneca, JLL, Morgan Stanley, and Nationwide. Box is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, with offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Visit box.com to learn more. And visit box.org to learn more about how Box empowers nonprofits to fulfill their missions.
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