The Cambridge Community Foundation celebrated its 100th anniversary last night with a gala celebration at the MIT Media Lab. We had the pleasure of creating the signature video for the event, featuring the story of Messay Endigawork, an Ethiopian immigrant who has taken advantage of several programs funded by the Foundation to move herself and her family forward.
The Foundation partners with local non-profits to support programs in health, education, culture, and community development. It works to bridge the gap between Cambridge’s wealth of financial and human capital and its deep-rooted problems of poverty, housing stresses, and inequality of opportunity. “Our role is as a connector between those phenomenal assets on one hand and the challenges on the other,” explains Foundation President Geeta Pradhan.
In its recent Boomtown/Hometown report, the Foundation explores the numbers behind Cambridge’s booming innovation economy and its increasing inequality. Only 23% of the city’s households were middle-income in 2015; about half were high income and the rest were low-income. The Foundation works to preserve Cambridge’s unique diversity and serve as a catalyst for positive change.