Lawrenceville Nonprofit Receives NJ Arts & Culture Grant

LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ – A Lawrenceville-based literary organization is among 60 nonprofits to be awarded a grant from the New Jersey Arts and Culture Recovery Fund (NJACRF).

People & Stories or Gente y Cuentos encourages adults and young adults to move forward with their education and helps strengthen their literacy skills through reading and discussion. The organization integrates its program with groups that help prisoners moving to probation, halfway house residents rejoining the community, at-risk youth, immigrants working towards citizenship, and others.

In their second round of funding, NJACRF awarded $1.3 million in grants to nonprofits working to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this year, the fund provided $2.6 million in grants to more than 100 organizations.

The NJACRF was established last year with a gift from the Grunin Foundation in response to the needs of the arts and culture community who were struggling to survive during the pandemic.

The fund is hosted by the Lawrenceville-based Princeton Area Community Foundation and chaired by Jeremy Grunin, President of the Grunin Foundation, and Sharnita C. Johnson, Program Director – Arts, of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Members include Prudential Foundation, Stone Foundation of NJ, E. J. Grassmann Trust, NJ State Council on the Arts, and the NJ Historical Commission. Other major donors include the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Amazon and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In total, six Mercer County organizations received funding in the second round. They are:

• Hopewell Valley Arts Council, Hopewell
• People & Stories / Gente y Cuentos, Lawrenceville
• Historical Society of Princeton, Princeton
• American Repertory Ballet/Princeton Ballet Society, Princeton
• Storytelling Arts, Princeton Junction section of West Windsor
• Preservation New Jersey, Trenton

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