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Description |
The Bauman Foundation was funded by the estate of Lionel R. Bauman, a New York City lawyer, businessman and philanthropist who supported education, the arts, social justice and civil rights through charitable and service activities during his lifetime.
The Foundation focuses its grants and operating programs on activities which encourage systemic changes rather than on those which ameliorate symptoms. The Foundation selects and becomes intimately familiar with carefully-chosen policy areas and identifies organizations through which it can accomplish its goals.
Current Programs:
- What's an Economy For?
The Foundation supports work that builds changes in institutions and power relations in economic and political life to achieve a society that places the interests of people and the natural environment in the forefront. Areas of focus include the role of corporations in society, democracy and the economy, economic justice grounded in religious traditions, and problems of the global economy.
- Society and the Environment
The interaction of people and environment is clear in the role of toxic chemicals and other environmental factors in chronic diseases, an association that suggests the need for primary prevention of health problems through pollution prevention. Examples include education and advocacy that stress the connections between human health and environment and implement citizen right-to-know laws and policies. The Foundation also provides some support to the religious traditions which have much to contribute to the cultural and political dialogue about the environment.
- Information for Democratic Accountability
Truly democratic public access to government information requires information policy and advocacy to support its widespread dissemination, as well as accompanying telecommunications policies that are inclusive and serve public goals in today's "information age." Due to scarce resources, the Foundation funds broad policy work rather than demonstration or pilot projects.
- Arts and Education
The Foundation provides some sustaining support to programs which it has initiated, as well as new programs which it has helped structure. The Foundation, working in consultation and/or collaboration with other funders, supports projects: which integrate the teaching of arts and use the arts to access other areas of learning as well as acknowledging and empowering multiple approaches to learning; which strengthen the traditional education role of the nation's art museums; the Foundation funds selected institutions which collaborate in innovative ways in collaboration with public schools and community organizations.
- Civic Education
The Foundation's efforts to teach the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democratic society is focused on the Constitutional Education Foundation and its successful and varied programs to teach the theory and practice of our system of Constitutional government to the school children of New York City and Philadelphia.
- Other
A minimal portion of the Foundation's grants are directed in other areas which change year-to-year.
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