Roslindale Resident Receives $30,000 Award at Annual Boston Neighborhood Fellows Event

Erika Rodriguez of Roslindale was presented a $30,000 grant by The Philanthropic Initiative and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh in recognition of her outstanding community service at this year’s 24th annual Boston Neighborhood Fellows award ceremony recently.  Rodriguez was one of five deserving Boston area award recipients to receive a portion of a cash grant totaling $150,000. The Boston Neighborhood Fellows program is generously funded by an anonymous donor and implemented by The Philanthropic Initiative.

Neighborhood Fellows are ordinary citizens engaged in extraordinary efforts to transform lives, improve their community and make Boston a better place to work and live. Each award recipient receives a three-year, $30,000 unrestricted grant paid in annual $10,000 installments. 

Rodriguez, co-founder of the Curley Project, a violence prevention program at a Jamaica Plain middle school was selected by The Philanthropic Initiative’s selection committee for her work in bringing healing and love to vulnerable young people since she was fifteen years old. In 2008, as part of the Beantown Society, Rodriguez and her peers organized an attempt to curb gang recruitment at the Curley Middle School. Their efforts were rebuffed by administrators until one day when a student was shot and killed on school grounds. Recognizing its error, the administration allowed Rodriguez and her peers to mobilize and take all the seventh and eighth graders to a local art center for a day of respite, starting an annual tradition that her nominator describes as “changing the culture of the school.”

The Philanthropic Initiative helped the anonymous donor design the Boston Neighborhood Fellows program 24 years ago as a way to directly impact individuals and the neighborhoods they love. 

Fellows are nominated by an anonymous group of spotters who represent the diversity found in the City of Boston, and are selected for their vision, creativity, leadership, and commitment to the people and the communities with whom they work. To date, 143 outstanding individuals have been recognized as Boston Neighborhood Fellows, with $3,500,000 awarded as grants.

“For this anonymous donor, it’s not about writing a check. It’s about reaching the right people in the right moment for the biggest philanthropic impact – the chance to truly move humanity forward by supporting the dedicated and passionate change agents in our city’s neighborhoods,” said Jamie Jaffee, managing partner, The Philanthropic Initiative.