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About us
Linley Foundation Incorporated is an independent nonprofit foundation dedicated to education and civic participation. After more than fifteen years supporting educational and community projects, the Foundation has chosen to concentrate its resources on a single initiative: The America I Want, a new civic education platform designed to give young people a meaningful role in the democratic conversation.
A NEW WAY OF DOING CIVICS
The America I Want is built on a simple premise: democracy is something young people should not only study. They should have opportunities to practice it.
The program is designed to be nonpartisan, student-led, teacher-guided, and easy for schools to use. It begins with aspirations rather than political positions and encourages students to listen, question, compare, and engage with people whose experiences may be very different from their own.
The first stage is American. The ambition is larger.
If young people in one country can use a shared platform to explore the society they want to live in, the same model can eventually connect young people across democratic societies—allowing them to discover what they share, where they differ, and what they can learn from one another.
Linley Foundation is the founding sponsor of The America I Want and is underwriting its development and national launch. As the program grows, the Foundation will invite philanthropic and institutional partners to help bring the program to schools and communities across the country.
Explore The America I Want →
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.
(Franklin D. Roosevelt)
The dialogue continues...
Where We Began
OVERSEAS
Linley Foundation's beginnings were modest and practical.
For more than fifteen years, the Foundation supported educational and community projects, primarily in northeastern Brazil. Rather than pursue a single large program, we worked with local educators and community leaders on projects where relatively small investments could make a tangible difference.
These included scholarships and vocational training for young adults, improvements to rural schools, emergency housing following severe flooding, and support for the construction of a community health clinic.
The Foundation also supported programs involving children and animals. These projects were based on a broader educational idea: that compassion can be learned and that young people can expand their circle of compassion beyond themselves to other people, their communities, and other living creatures.
These were small projects, undertaken close to the communities they served.
They also helped shape a conviction that now informs the Foundation's work in civic education:
Education is most powerful when people are not simply taught an idea, but are given the opportunity to experience and practice it themselves.
That conviction is at the heart of The America I Want.
Looking Forward is a program that identifies people with dreams far beyond their means and circumstances. The program was designed is to assist them in achieving their ambitions through further education and technical training.
2015 / 2020
Linley Foundation worked with Erle Schal Amorim and Community Leader Rejane Lourenco de Oliveira to fund the purchase of land and construction of a medical clinic in the Barra de Mamanguape, Paraiba, Brazil. The enterprise galvanized the village with people volunteering their time and skills to help in the clinic’s construction. The village now has a permanent and functioning health clinic.
2015
Linley sponsored and funded school improvement projects to raise the quality of rural schools to the same level, or better, than their urban counterparts.
2017 / 2019
Many families lost their houses in the 2008 flood in Rio Tinto, Brazil. Linley Foundation underwrote the rebuilding of their houses with donations from Brazil and the USA.
2008
Linley Foundation participated in the funding of an animal sanctuary in Rio Tinto, Paraiba. The “jegue”or donkey, which has been for centuries the common means of transportation, has become superfluous. Motorcycles have taken their place. The result is that these animals have been cut loose in huge numbers to fend for themselves.Thousands were struggling to survive. The sanctuary was a place to care for the surplus animals.
2007 / 2015
Linley Foundation supported a six month program with children and horses in January, 2006 in the Barra de Mamanguape, Paraiba, Brazil. Through awareness and care of abused horses, the children extended the practice of the Golden Rule to other sentient creatures. The program also offered workshops for the children to practice reading and writing. Collectively they wrote a book about the difficult life of one horse entitled "How I Became Espelho."
2006 / 2007
Espelho Project
Expanding the Circle of Compassion
