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Posted December 31, 2005
Contact: Amanda
Erekson, Operations Manager
MAVIN FOUNDATION CELEBRATES MANY MILESTONES IN 2005
(Seattle) MAVIN Foundation celebrated many exciting
milestones in 2005, thanks to the generous support of our 8,000 members
and donors. In addition to launching four new projects, we continued
our award-winning health and community programming, produced a film,
and embarked on a strategic planning process. Other 2005 highlights
included: marking our most successful fundraising year ever, seeing
our website receive over five million hits, and learning that our founder
and president, Matt Kelley, will step down in early 2006.
In true "Year in Review" fashion, here's a quick run-down
of our busy and productive 2005:
January
We kicked off the year by opening
its doors to welcome the community into its Pioneer Square offices.
Food, resources and dozens of rambunctious kids highlighted the evening!
We registered our 10,000th bone marrow donor as part of our
MatchMaker Bone Marrow Project!
February
We celebrated Valentine's Day with our first-annual "Colors
of Love: A Celebration of Interracial and Intercultural Love,"
an intimate evening with local
interracial couples to commemorate the historic Supreme Court Case,
Loving v. Virginia.
We launched its"One Box
Isn't Enough!" campaign. In the fall, students delivered over
3,200 comment cards to the U.S. Department of Education encouraging
them to implement the 1997 federal mandate requiring schools to allow
students to mark more than one race on forms.
March
We launched the Generation
MIX National Awareness Tour, which sent five twenty-somethings 10,000
miles across the U.S. in an RV to raise awareness of America's multiracial
baby boom! The Tour was covered by the New York Times and NPR!
April
Matt Kelley provided testimony to the U.S. Congress', Labor, Health
and Human Services Subcommittee about the health needs of multiracial
Americans.
May
Matt Kelley presented the findings of MAVIN's Community
MAP pilot project with the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors
and the Japanese American
Citizen's League to explore project expansion opportunities. The
Board presented Kelley with an official document endorsing the project.
June
Matt Kelley presented at the National Education Association's
(NEA) national conference in Los Angeles about the education needs of
mixed heritage students in America's classrooms. It was the first time
that the issue was formally addressed by the nation's largest teacher's
organization.
July
We launched the Adoptee Empowerment
Project to develop cultural identities and connectedness among international
adoptees.
We celebrated the third anniversary of our Seattle-area community group,
MIX, with a
barbecue at Luther Burbank Park.
August
We continued to provide our unique internship
experience to 27 high school and college students in 2005 alone!
We conducted our second annual National
Mixed Heritage Student Leadership Retreat at beautiful Mt. Rainier
National Park.
September
We formally launched the Mixed Heritage
Center with the Association of MultiEthnic Americans (AMEA) via
a beta
website. The MHC will be the central clearinghouse of information
related to mixed heritage issues!
We began to release outcomes from our strategic
plan, which included a new mission
and three areas for future programming:
Health, Education and Policy.
October
We conducted our third annual Gala
and Auction, "Imagine," at the swanky McCaw Hall at Seattle
Center. Over the past three years, our Gala has raised over $200,000
for MAVIN Foundation programming.
We produced the documentary film, "Chasing
Daybreak," which chronicles the Generation
MIX National Awareness Tour, and screened it in multiple locations
across the U.S., as well as South Korea and Brazil!
Our founder/president, Matt Kelley, announced
that he will step down in early 2006. Immediately, an Executive
Transition Committee is established and a national search goes underway.
November
We published a groundbreaking
report on how U.S. colleges and universities classify their mixed
heritage students, which found that a mere 3% do so correctly!
December
We created a Web
site for multiracial and transracially adopted college students
to help them navigate the creation and maintenance of student groups,
including a 120-page online toolkit.
We launched our Education Project,
which combined existing MAVIN programming with bold new initiatives
to create a support pipeline for America's 2.5 million mixed heritage
students.
Our website (www.mavinfoundation.org) surpasses the five million hits
mark in 2005.
We closed out the year with nearly $600,000 in cash and in-kind support
from our members, donors and funders, making 2005 our most successful
fundraising year to date!
Thank you to everyone who makes our work possible.
We wish you health and happiness in the New Year, and look forward to
continuing to celebrate and empower mixed heritage people and families
in 2006!
MAVIN Foundation builds healthy communities that celebrate and empower
mixed heritage people and families. Since 1998, MAVIN has invested over
$2.5 million into innovative and award-winning projects
focused on mixed heritage people, transracial adoptees and multiracial
families. For more information, visit www.mavinfoundation.org.
For more information, email Amanda
or call 206 622 7101.
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