A focus on South LA
To help in South L.A., you have to understand the community, the people, the problem, and the history before you can find a viable solution. Weingart Foundation, a private grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial, social, and economic justice, has made a shift in their organization to better equip themselves with helping the residents in South L.A. This shift included the creation of a new position and the promotion of Los Angeles Dana Henry into a new role suited to her skill set.
Founded in 1951, the Weingart Foundation has granted over $1 billion to organizations, strengthening their efforts in human services, housing, health, education, and community power building. In addition, the Foundation builds networks and collaboratives with philanthropic, public sector, and community leaders to advance equity and justice together. Weingart made South Los Angeles a place of focus in 2016 under the leadership of Karren Lane and has made great strides in helping the community in different areas.
Henry joined the Weingart Foundation at the start of COVID-19 and racial reckoning in 2020 as a program officer leading the Foundation’s grantmaking and broader funding strategy in South Los Angeles. Henry has over 20 years of experience working with underprivileged youth, teaching them life skills and workforce skills to equipment with the proper tools and teachings to be successful humans.
"The transition was difficult because I was entirely new to the role, and my predecessor Lane made great progress that I was expected to keep up," Henry said as she talked about life once accepting the program officer role. " A lot of people needed help, and allocating resources to the places they would be maximized helped me understand better how the system deprives us of our needs, and I had to commit early on to be accessible to everybody."
Henry's work throughout the years and her fondness of wanting to help led to Weingart creating a new role for her within the company to assist her mission of spreading love and resources to South L.A.
"This is the biggest honor to date in my life as I have a bigger pool of resources to help the Black community and provide better opportunities for them to live a better life," Henry said as she spoke about being appointed Director of Black Justice and Healing. "When we eliminate the anti-Blackness in the country, the quality of life gets better for every ethnic group because we would then be leaning into our full humanity."
