Equity Network of Southern Minnesota receives $25,000 grant

MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) - A southern Minnesota nonprofit has received a $25,000 grant from the Obama Foundation.

The Equity Network of Southern Minnesota received the grant from My Brother’s Keeper Alliance. The Equity Network creates safe spaces for boys and young men of color in the Mankato, St. Peter, and Le Sueur areas.

One of those spaces under construction is the Frederick Douglass Freedom Readers Center, which will be a grant-funded and free library.

The grant will be used to make literature exciting in a fun and unique way.

”So a proactive safe space where they can understand that readers are going to be leaders and that reading is lit,” explained Briana Williamson, founder and executive director of the Equity Network. “So they can have this opportunity to engage with books in a much different way, engage with each other in a much different way and really create a micro-brotherhood, if you will.”

The My Brother’s Keeper Alliance gave out $1 million in grants to nonprofit organizations nationwide.

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