Coach and the Coach Foundation: Providing Access to Education
Originally published in Tapestry's 2021 Corporate Responsibility Report
Our brands and their Foundations use their unique capabilities and creativity to drive positive impact in the areas most important to them, their customers and their communities.
COACH AND THE COACH FOUNDATION: PROVIDING ACCESS TO EDUCATION
Since its founding in 2008, the Coach Foundation has given more than $60 million to nonprofit partners all over the world. Inspired by the spirit of New York, Coach’s hometown since 1941, the Foundation partners with nonprofits that support local and global communities. In FY2021, Coach and the Coach Foundation donated over $6 million to more than 40 nonprofit organizations around the world.
Dream It Real
Founded in 1941 in New York City, Coach is the result of an immigrant’s dream made real. Our Foundation stays true to our brand’s founding and our shared belief that everyone should have the freedom to dream, live authentically, and thrive.
Dream It Real is the Coach Foundation’s signature program with a mission to help break cycles of inequality by empowering the next generation to reach their full potential through higher education. Dream It Real helps underrepresented young people around the world pursue their paths and purpose through grants focused on educational access and opportunity for all.
In FY2021, Dream It Real supported over 20,000 young people around the world and focused on combating the educational gap exacerbated by COVID-19, which disproportionally affected students of color and from low-income communities. By providing emergency response funding for critical virtual education technology, access to mental health resources and student scholarships to its trusted nonprofit partners including Bottom Line, The Opportunity Network and Year Up, the Coach Foundation reduced barriers to educational access and opportunity for BIPOC students.
As part of its focus on students from underrepresented communities, Dream It Real supported members of the LGBTQIA+ community through its partnership with the Point Foundation and Hetrick Martin Institute, and partnered with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund to provide scholarships to students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. 25 students were selected to receive a scholarship of up to $5,000 ($2,500 per semester) for the 2021-2022 academic school year.(22)
DREAM IT REAL AROUND THE GLOBE
Dream It Real continued its global expansion in FY2021 through more than $2 million in international grants. This included $1 million to the China Youth Development Foundation, providing more than 1,000 scholarships to rural Chinese students from low-income families to attend university.
In Japan, the Foundation continued its partnership with Katariba by supporting the “Opportunity” program for high-need students to have access to virtual programming, mentoring, family counseling and scholarship assistance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the United Kingdom, the Foundation funded a second year of the U.K. Youth X Dream It Real curriculum, a 3-month development course led by expert youth workers across the U.K. reaching over 900 students with a focus on Black, Asian and minority studies.
(22) Funds covered verifiable costs associated with average tuition and usual fees
