By Helin Taskesen, MENA-X Founder and Student

One of my main goals for MENA-X was to keep the mentorship program free so there would be no financial barriers for families. As a student from a public high school and without much knowledge of financial literacy and entrepreneurship I first needed to learn how to sustain and expand MENA-X.

Even in the diverse school district I attend as a Middle Eastern immigrant, few people look like me, share similar cultures, or have similar experiences. This made me afraid to discuss the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, culture, and my experiences. 

When I first started attending elementary school in the United States of America, I just wanted to fit in. When I saw people talking about things different from what people were used to, they would get laughed at and bullied. So I chose to stay quiet because I assumed no one would try to defend me.

As I got older, I realized trying to fit into other people’s cultural norms meant losing touch with my culture and things that I cared about. As a result, during my freshman year of high school (2020-21), I started a club called MENA-X to bring people interested in or from the MENA region together at my school. Over time I realized MENA-X could be more than a club and decided to expand it into an organization. 

The central part of the organization, the MENA-X Mentorship Program, is an after-school program allowing underserved elementary school students to learn about Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) fields and MENA culture. The cultural aspect emphasizes breaking the bias and stereotypes formed around MENA cultures and people and instead shows the positive impacts that MENA cultures, people, and communities have had on the world. 

One of my main goals for MENA-X was to keep the mentorship program free so there would be no financial barriers for families. As a student from a public high school and without much knowledge of financial literacy and entrepreneurship, I first needed to learn how to sustain and expand MENA-X. 

Adventures in learning the barriers involved in the traditional grant process

With the help of supportive staff at Grover Cleveland STEM High School, I took a chance in applying for my first-ever grant, the Youth-Led Social Justice Mini-Grant from the Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning. Spending over 25+ hours, I wrote a script, edited and recorded multiple videos, created a budget sheet, and asked for constructive criticism from those willing to review my application. 

As a newly formed organization founded by a high school student, especially one serving people from a region with such a negative political spotlight, the chance of me receiving a grant was not too high. I spent hours reviewing my video, written proposal, and budget, adding links to specific items, and writing exact costs and why we needed each item. 

I submitted my application for exactly $1,950.12 in October. 

After a delay in award notifications, in February I received a notification that MENA-X would receive the amount applied for! 

Though $1950 may not seem like a lot for an organization, it is enough to ensure the MENA-X Mentorship Program stays free for all students and makes MENA-X a more self-sustainable and professional organization. 

Sadly, the grant-receiving process took much longer than expected. With continuous contact and update request emails over the course of 5 months, I realized that we might not have been the priority for this grant. 

After hearing about my project, a local education-focused nonprofit, Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), stepped up and offered to be the fiscal sponsor for my grant. The offer came in October, we received the steps to confirm the fiscal sponsorship in June, and by mid-July, we finally received the grant money. But with this grant, we were required to spend all the funds before 2023, leaving us with less time to design, purchase, and receive items. 

Although I was so grateful to have received that grant, the lack of communication and support during the paperwork stage to get the money to SESEC minimized its impact. The grant timeline stated that the program would receive funds by March if selected, so I planned accordingly. 

The MENA-X Mentorship Program starts annually around October, so the goal was to use the grant at the end of the 2021-22 school year and prepare items for the upcoming years. Because there was a delay in receiving the grant, I had to cover additional costs from money I had saved up from my part-time job. 

While working with SESEC, my contact recommended I apply for the SESEC Youth Grantmakers Program. As a woman of color who decided to venture into the world of grant writing, organizational leadership, and community impact, I had to learn about the grant writing world alone. However, this was an opportunity to take the initiative and create an equitable grant writing process for other organizations.

Reimagining what a more equitable process could be with the SESEC Youth Participatory Grant Making project

While experiencing the grant world as both a grant writer and a grantor, I got to see the possibilities along with the difficulties of providing an equitable and fair opportunity. And an opportunity to create a process for providing organizations with the support they need to continue the positive change they are making in their communities.

The SESEC Youth Participatory Grant Making (YPGM) project brought together youth of color from across the city of Seattle to design, market, and award $10,000 worth of grants to local nonprofit organizations that we chose. It gave us the opportunity to learn from established people of color working in philanthropy about the racial inequities in traditional grant-making. The project also connected us with grant writers and grantors from College Spark, Phila Engaged Giving, and the Initai Foundation, and tasked us with figuring out how we could do things differently to make sure the money we were granting had an impact in our community of South Seattle. 

Some of our main goals were to 1. pick organizations that have people of color from the community in executive positions, and 2. pick organizations that fight homelessness or educational inequalities. We designed an application process with questions to see the change these nonprofits wanted to make and that they were willing to create that change and continue pursuing their goals. 

Before reviewing applications, we created a scoring rubric to eliminate as much bias as we could, and while reviewing, everyone had a chance to voice their opinions and we made decisions together. 

We asked organizations to provide information about their organization, representation on the executive board, past projects, how they wanted to spend their funds, and more. Questions on the rubric were composed of general responses to the questions in the application, but also by tying together multiple aspects of the organization, for example:

How big is the organization? What is the annual budget (if given the information)? Is the organization run by the community it serves?

3 points — The organization’s leaders are from the community it serves. It has a small staff and budget.

2 points — The organization has representation from the community that it serves. It has a medium staff and budget.

1 point — The organization has no representation from the community it serves. It has a large budget and staff.

Using a more holistic approach, as a group, we decided on the organizations that should receive the funds from this grant. 

While experiencing the grant world as both a grant writer and a grantor, I got to see the possibilities along with the difficulties of providing an equitable and fair opportunity. And an opportunity to create a process for providing organizations with the support they need to continue the positive change they are making in their communities.

From our choices, I know those funds were going to organizations in my community and organizations my friends and classmates participated in. Knowing the intended usage of the funds and the genuine strengths of the organizations we funded, I know that the money will come right back to help support the South Seattle community.