Two Medford organizations receive $100,000 from Cummings Foundation

Cummings Foundation, Inc. has announced a significant expansion of its support for Medford not-for-profits. Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Tufts University and Solutions for Living have each received grants of $100,000. 

Through its recently created grant-making affiliate, OneWorld Boston, Inc., the Woburn-based foundation will award 60 new grants totaling $6 million in 2012, almost all within eastern Middlesex, southern Essex, and Suffolk counties. The awards will be paid over one to five years. During the inaugural grant cycle, OneWorld Boston received 203 proposals between January 2 to April 15, 2012.

Representatives from Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Tufts University and Solutions for Living recently gathered at 200 Boston Avenue to receive their award letters and grant checks from Cummings Properties operations manager Dave Blumberg. Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn also participated in the check presentations.

Cummings Foundation is a principal beneficiary of the earnings from Woburn-based commercial real estate firm Cummings Properties. The 43-year-old company manages more than 10 million square feet of prime office, lab, and medical space, including 200 Boston Avenue, which is currently expanding with a 35,000 square foot addition.

“Both of these organizations work very hard to better the quality of people’s lives. Having long been a member of the Medford community, Cummings Properties is delighted to give back to its neighbors through its charitable affiliates,” said Blumberg, a Medford resident.

The grant award for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute will be used to upgrade electronic equipment and develop an online registration system in the hopes of introducing a new audience to its program. The Institute aims to provide retirees, and those nearing retirement, with social and intellectual stimulation through peer-led study groups.

Since 1979, Solutions for Living has offered counseling services to help individuals, families, and businesses navigate life’s challenges and achieve their full potential. Its award will support “Living in Two Worlds,” a pilot program that helps its students explore their multicultural roots and discuss with their families issues of prejudice, discrimination, and racism.

While the vast majority of the Foundation’s awards will assist organizations in its tri-county focus area, its healthcare grants are quite diverse. It has pledged $250,000 to establish a national cancer infusion center in the city of Butaro, in northern Rwanda. An additional $100,000 has been committed to Rwinkwavu Hospital, also in Rwanda, for an agricultural training program to combat chronic malnutrition, one of the country’s most vexing development challenges.

The operations of these two rural hospitals, both part of Boston-based Partners In Health, are overseen by Dr. Peter Drobac, who has appointments at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In an email of appreciation for the grants, Drobac wrote, “Cancer care and integrated food security are two of Partners In Health’s most important new initiatives, and we expect both to have significant impact throughout this remarkable country.”

Joyce and Bill Cummings personally visited Rwinkwavu Hospital in January. They also toured the site selected for the new National Cancer Center, about 50 miles north of Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city. The Winchester, Mass. couple established Cummings Foundation in 1986, donating to it more than 90 percent of the wealth they made through Cummings Properties.

Bill Cummings was raised in Medford, graduating from Medford High School in 1954 and Tufts University in 1958.

Other Rwandan grants include $100,000 each to Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, in support of its professional training programs for youths orphaned during the country’s 1994 genocide, and the National Genocide Memorial Museum in Kigali. The Foundation’s Institute for World Justice also reportedly awarded more than $100,000 this year to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

OneWorld Boston’s next grant cycle is expected to open in fall 2012, with updated information to be posted at www.CummingsFoundation.org this summer. Letters of inquiry will be accepted, and select organizations will then be invited to submit in-depth proposals for approximately $15 million in awards, strictly within the tri-county area of northeast Massachusetts.