In 2004, OSI's Cooperative Global Engagement Project in partnership with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation launched Connect US, a growing network of U.S. initiatives that promote responsible U.S. global engagement. Connect US includes a network linking participating organizations, and a donor fund that supports network activities as well as innovative projects that promote positive U.S. global engagement. Connect US has announced its first round of grants, which focus on reaching women, new constituencies, and the business community.

For more information on the collaborative donor fund, please contact Tides Foundation at connectus@tides.org.

For more information on the Connect US Network, please contact Alison Giffen at agiffen@osi-dc.org.

Connect US 2004 Grantees Project Summaries

For a slightly longer description of the 2004 grantees, please download the pdf at the bottom of this page.

Americans for Informed Democracy (AID)
AID will organize and institutionalize the "Bringing the World Home Symposium," a summit for American students studying abroad on how to communicate multilateral messages and raise global awareness in the United States.

Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute's Global Interdependence Initiative (GII) will develop, customize, and deliver training on communicating effectively about global issues for Connect US Network members.

Bank Information Center (BIC)
"United States and the Multilateral Development Banks" will develop background briefings, activist toolkits, and regular information updates on the U.S. role in Multilateral Development Banks for activists across issue areas.

Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities/TrueMajority (BLSP/TM)
BLSP/TM will engage business leaders in several states by establishing networks to educate their peers, the press, the public, and policy makers about the need for a more multilateral, less militaristic and interventionist U.S. foreign policy.

Center for International Understanding (CIU)
"North Carolina in the World" seeks to infuse international content into curriculum across subject areas through various steps, including a convening for teachers, policy advocacy, and international school partnerships.

Center for U.S. Global Engagement
"Acting Globally, Working Locally" will amplify the voices of a broad-based network of business and community leaders committed to the importance of global engagement outside the beltway through a state-by-state analysis of the impact of international affairs funding, a compilation of success stories of international affairs funding abroad, and city-wide coalitions.

Center for Women Policy Studies, League of Women Voters, Women's Environment and Development Organization
"Women Engaging Globally—Promoting Positive U.S. Global Engagement " will create a national cadre of grassroots women leaders as advocates on U.S. foreign policy through town hall meetings on specific foreign policy issues of interest to women in strategically chosen cities across the country.

Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund (CGSEF)
CGSEF will develop an alternate set of messages to more effectively frame treaties and international institutions as critical to the U.S. national interest, to shift the debate from individual treaties to a broader dialogue about the needs for U.S. leadership.

CODEPINK: Women for Peace
CODEPINK, MotherSpeak and the Social Venture Network's "Women's Peace Leadership Training Program" will train U.S. military, businesswomen, and women from "middle America" to be spokespeople for an alternative U.S. foreign policy based on international law and global cooperation.

Communications Consortium Media Center (CCMC)
The Women's E-Media Center builds NGOs' communication capacity by providing specialized press lists, media message analysis, polling research, and other resources to increase U.S. media coverage of global and domestic policy issues that affect women.

Enlaces America and Foreign Policy In Focus (Enlaces–FPIF)
Enlaces America and FPIF will train Latino and Caribbean community leaders and organizations on message and media outreach, participatory research, and policymaker education with a focus on immigration, labor, trade (CAFTA), agriculture policy, the environment, and militarized borders.

Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF)
FMF will develop a global issues campus training program on college campuses that focuses on global poverty, sweatshops, degradation of the environment, and restrictions on women's rights.

Global Justice
"The Generation FAIR: Young People for Fair, Accountable, Interdependent and Responsible Network" will host regional advocacy, organizing, and media training for over 500 student activists in the U.S. and abroad.

Henry L. Stimson Center
The Stimson Center will provide training for Connect US Network participants, citizens, and organizations on effective engagement of Congress on peace and security issues through its "Local Worldviews Initiative."

Jubilee USA Network
Jubilee's Global Connections Tour will bring international partners to five cities to educate Americans, particularly new constituencies of color and conservative faiths, about the connections between aid, debt, trade, environment, and human rights.

Link Media, Inc.
Link Media will produce short action alerts entitled "What you can do" on their national satellite network, which will highlight people creating a better world, provide effective media tools, and link viewers to websites of partner nonprofit organizations.

Mainstream Media Project
The "Global Engagement Media Project" will book several national radio and TV interviews with Connect US members and others to provide a consistent presence in the broadcast media of new approaches interrelated issues affected by U.S. foreign policy.

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
NCC's "Faithful Americans and Foreign Policy" project will disseminate a five-part curriculum, "American Christians in the Global Community," to 70,000 churches to move participants toward a more knowledgeable, cooperative, multilateral, and sustained view of America's role in the world.

National Priorities Project (NPP)
NPP's "Foreign Policy and Federal Dollars" project will provide local organizing initiatives and others with easy-to-understand, web-interactive materials illustrating how federal tax dollars are spent globally, including military, humanitarian aid, and diplomacy dollars.

Natural Resources Defense Council and COLEAD
The Earth Legacy Campaign is a coalition of leading American environmental and foreign affairs groups seeking to encourage renewed U.S. leadership to protect the global environment through efforts to build an Earth Legacy Commission.

NetAid
"Global Citizen Corps" is a pilot project that will build a coordinated national movement of high school students committed to a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world through media, resource mobilization, peer education, and constituent building.

Ploughshares Fund
The Peace and Security Initiative is a collaborative effort that will produce policy papers, media resources, communications and grassroots organizing trainings, and capacity building tools for NGOs to better influence policy makers and opinion leaders.

SOUL, School Of Unity and Liberation
"Global Justice Program" uses interactive political education exercises to develop a global analysis and informed perspective on the U.S. role in the world for young organizers—especially young women, people of color, queer youth, and low-income youth.

TransAfrica Forum
A network of human rights, grassroots, religious, labor, and women's organizations will launch the "Haiti One Standard! Campaign" to provide technical assistance and mobilize local groups of Haitian community activists and their allies in U.S. cities.

Women's Action for New Directions (WAND) Education
"New Vision New Voices on Security" will provide educational resources to women, youth, and faith-based communities on foreign policy and security issues, prepare them to communicate effectively, and support them as they engage their communities, policymakers and the media.

Women's Edge Coalition
Women's Edge launched the "Million Women Challenge for a Better, Safer World," a public education campaign working to mobilize local women's grassroots advocates to take action and encourage policymakers to support multilateral institutions.