25 leaders selected to receive training in the field of development Baton Rouge, Louisiana – The Baton Rouge Area Foundation today announced the 2024 cohort of Development Fellows, a program of the Foundation’s Center for Nonprofit Excellence. One of the Foundation’s signature programs, Development Fellows is a workshop series that teaches fundraising fundamentals to enhance […]
Serena Pandos is the new executive director and president of Louisiana Art and Science Museum, replacing Carol Gikas, who retired after 39 years. Pandos was president and executive director of the International Museum of Art and Science in McAllen, Texas. She is a native of Baltimore. Why did you choose to take the LASM executive […]
New Schools for Baton Rouge offers radical reform model, the country is watching By Sara Bongiorni The stakes were always high for New Schools for Baton Rouge, which set out to give 12,000 students in the parish’s worst schools better options by recruiting top charter-school operators to Baton Rouge. It has opened 15 schools in […]
Under a new plan, BR could build extensive bike, pedestrian network By Sara Bongiorni The draft of a master plan for developing a parishwide network of bike and pedestrian paths recommends 140 miles of new bike lanes and other on-road features, including 50 miles of new bike lanes separated from car traffic by curbs or […]
Jamel Brinkley won the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for his debut collection A Lucky Man. The Baton Rouge Area Foundation started and oversees the $10,000 book award, which this year is underwritten by the McMains Family. In its 12th year, the award recognizes the best work of fiction by an African-American […]
Currents Q1 2019
2019 Annual Report
By Maggie Heyn Richardson To the south, there is Nicholson Drive, Louisiana Highway 30, a major corridor that runs from downtown Baton Rouge past Tiger Stadium and continues southward to Ascension Parish. In the last decade, the stretch between downtown and LSU, in particular, has seen a flurry of investment, including new multi-family housing, retail […]
By Maggie Heyn Richardson Few public health problems are as complex as obesity. Forty percent of adults in the United States now struggle with the condition, the highest rate on record. Its causes are many, its cures little understood and its ripple effects undeniable. Obesity is the spark that ignites a litany of costly diseases, […]
Gentrification is improving neighborhoods in Mid City. By Sara Bongiorni The Economist magazine calls gentrification the dirtiest word in American cities. Used to describe an influx of middle-class, often white newcomers to depressed, often minority neighborhoods, gentrification has been compared to mass violence, white supremacy and re-colonization. Some critics consider it hate speech. Others use […]