The Cleveland Foundation has announced December grants totaling $12.7 million, bringing its total grantmaking for the year to $93.7 million.

Focused on supporting educational and development programs for young people and adults, the grants include $650,000 to Starting Point, the out-of-school-time lead agency for the foundation-led MyCom initiative, to expand and enhance quality programming available to young people in the region, especially in the afterschool hours; $150,000 to Youth Opportunities Unlimited to help build its network of private-sector partners working to boost the number of job and internship opportunities available to Cleveland teens; $325,000 to Esperanza, Inc. to expand its educational and family programming, including programs focused on youth leadership, mentorship, family engagement, and school attendance; and $200,000 to the Boys and Girls Club of Cleveland in support of the organization's efforts to increase the number of youth it serves daily from four hundred and fifty to a thousand.

In addition, the foundation awarded $220,000 to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District to support the ongoing transformation of its career center high schools into more innovative and relevant career academies; $150,000 to Asian Services in Action, Inc. in continuing support for a financial education pilot program that helps low-income Asian immigrants with limited English proficiency build their savings rate and improve their credit scores; and $161,088 to the Economic and Community Development Institute in support of the Women's Business Center of Ohio, which it launched earlier this year.

"Through programs aimed at keeping young people positively engaged, to organizations offering new opportunities for adults facing challenges, we are pleased that many of our December grants will help empower a broad segment of Clevelanders to succeed and thrive," said Cleveland Foundation executive vice president Robert E. Eckardt. "As we reflect on the first year of our second century of grantmaking, the foundation is proud of the nearly $100 million in support we've provided this year through the generosity of our donors to enhance the lives of residents in Cuyahoga, Lake, and Geauga counties."