Advocating for Black history through the Rural-Urban Debate League // Intercultural Microgrant Guest Blog

The following guest blog is from 2024 Intercultural Microgrant recipients Shauntrice Martin & Iniejah Allen Jr., organizing a rural-urban debate league for youth. They received support through our Civic Health Microgrants fund. Learn more about this project at kyrux.org/microgrants/2024.


As part of the Kentucky Rural-Urban Debate League, our students presented their research to a national audience in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center and 1619 Project.

Learn more below in a visual essay from the team & hear from the youth voices behind the project.


The Kentucky Intercultural Microgrant Program is a seed grant to support two or more individuals or organizations collaborating across distance, difference, or sector on projects that celebrate and connect Kentucky's people and places. 

Launched with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, Kentucky Waterways Alliance, Fund for the Arts, the Monument Workshop at UK, the Josh May Memorial Fund, and individual donors, the 2024 Microgrant Program invests in a series of seed grants (awards from $250-2000) to support short-term projects that foster dialogue, connection, or collaboration among Kentuckians from disparate backgrounds, identities, or experiences. Projects that involve diverse partners and invite the public to participate are preferred.

ICM 2024, MicrograntsKYRUX