Our Grantees

Backyard Readers Nashville operates a grassroots, volunteer-powered book delivery and read-aloud program serving 280 children in East Nashville's Cayce Place and James A. Cayce public housing communities. Volunteers deliver age-appropriate books directly to families' homes and conduct weekly read-aloud sessions in community common areas. The Levy Love Foundation's grant funds the purchase of 2,400 books annually, training for 45 volunteer readers, and pre-literacy assessment materials to track children's progress toward kindergarten readiness. In 2024, 73 percent of enrolled children showed measurable gains in letter recognition and phonemic awareness over a six-month period.

The Nashville Youth Arts Collective runs a 24-week after-school visual arts and digital media program at three Title I elementary schools in North Nashville. Professional teaching artists lead sessions in painting, printmaking, digital photography, and short film production. The program culminates in an annual public exhibition at the Frist Art Museum's Community Gallery, where students' work is professionally mounted and displayed for a three-week run. The Levy Love Foundation's grant covers instructor salaries, art supplies, and exhibition costs. Student retention rates exceed 88 percent across all three school sites, and participating students show a 19 percent improvement in school attendance compared to non-participating peers.

Harmony Family Services provides bilingual (English-Spanish) family counseling, parenting education, and housing navigation services to immigrant families with school-age children in the Antioch corridor, one of Nashville's most diverse and fastest-growing communities. The organization employs four bilingual licensed clinical social workers who provide individual family counseling, group workshops on co-parenting and positive discipline, and direct assistance navigating Tennessee's social services systems. The Levy Love Foundation's grant supports the counseling program and childcare services that allow parents to attend workshops without additional burden. Since receiving our first grant in 2022, Harmony has served 312 families and reports that 94 percent remain stably housed 12 months after enrollment.

The Murfreesboro City Schools Foundation administers a six-week Summer Discovery Academy combining academic enrichment in reading and mathematics with hands-on STEM exploration, visual arts, and physical fitness. The Levy Love Foundation's scholarship grant provides full tuition coverage for 30 students from families qualifying for free or reduced lunch. The academy employs certified teachers and uses the Orton-Gillingham reading methodology for students identified as struggling readers. Post-program assessment data from 2024 shows that 87 percent of scholarship recipients maintained or improved their spring reading level, and 79 percent showed gains in math fluency.

Conexion Americas operates a bilingual Parent Leadership Academy in South Nashville's Casa Azafran community campus. The 10-week workshop series, delivered in Spanish with English materials, covers interactive read-aloud techniques, understanding the Tennessee academic standards and report card system, communicating effectively with teachers and school administrators, supporting homework routines, and building a print-rich home environment on a limited budget. The Levy Love Foundation's grant covers workshop facilitation, bilingual educational materials, on-site childcare during sessions, and take-home book bundles for participating families. The 2024 cohort served 48 families, and post-assessment data shows a 41 percent increase in daily reading time reported by participating parents.

Fourth-grade teacher Maria Santiago received a 2024 Teacher Innovation Award for her "Mundo de Cuentos" (Story World) project, which creates a bilingual classroom library and weekly storytelling circle where English-learning students share traditional family stories in their home languages before working with peers to write and illustrate bilingual picture books. The award funded the purchase of 120 bilingual and multilingual children's books, a tablet-based digital storytelling station, and professional bookbinding supplies. The project has been adopted by two additional classrooms at Cane Ridge and was presented at the 2024 Levy Love Educator Showcase at the Nashville Public Library.

Doors of Hope Community Center in Madison operates a Saturday morning family literacy program serving Kurdish, Somali, and Arabic-speaking refugee families resettled in the Madison and Rivergate corridor. The program combines interactive parent-child reading sessions with ESL-integrated literacy coaching for parents, using culturally familiar stories and multilingual materials. Children participate in structured phonemic awareness and pre-reading activities while parents attend parallel adult literacy workshops. The Levy Love Foundation's grant covers multilingual book collections, certified ESL instructor time, and culturally appropriate snacks and childcare. Since 2022, the program has served 85 families and reports that participating children enter kindergarten with letter recognition scores 35 percent higher than district averages for comparable ESL populations.