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Barefoot today announced the recipients of its annual grant program in which two non-profit organizations receive at least $25,000 of in-kind services to help them solve a communications need. This year’s recipients are: Visionaries & Voices and Beaded Hope. This commitment means that Barefoot has donated more than $1 million in agency time to more than 20 non-profit organizations since the company’s founding in 1993.

“Our biggest reward is doing great work that builds our clients’ businesses and that earns us recognition for creativity and effectiveness,” said Doug Worple, the firm’s founder and executive creative director. “And the benefit of that is that is enablues us to grow, which means we are in a position to donate our services to some needy organizations doing great work in our town and around the world.”

Visionaries & Voices, one of this year’s grant winners, is a Cincinnati art studio where the mentally challenged can draw, paint, sculpt and write under the watchful eye and encouraging direction of professional artists. The art making not only serves as therapy, but provides a means by which these “outsider artists” can express themselves, share their vision of the world and, along the way, inspire people and open minds. Barefoot will be creating advertising and other promotional materials to support Visionaries & Voices’ first major public event: Visionnati, a two-day art fair on August 26 and 27 in Cincinnati, which will celebrate the work of outsider artists.

Beaded Hope, the other ‘06 grant winner, relies on education and employment to empower families in South Africa who have been impacted by HIV/AIDS. The organization accomplishes this by providing South African women with the opportunity to earn an income, support their families and nurture their creativity, all while preserving age-old bead-working traditions. Ornaments, jewelry and other items made by the women are sold in the United States with proceeds being returned to the women who made them. All additional profits are funneled back into the Charity & Faith AIDS Hospice Center in Mamelodi, South Africa. It’s the largest hospice in South Africa with 140 beds available free of charge. Barefoot will create a new website for Beaded Hope allowing the organization to educate more people around the world and and provide alternative ways to raise more funds.

“We were quite moved by what these young organizations have already accomplished,” said Catherine Basil, senior account executive at Barefoot and the lead organizer of the company’s grant program. “In addition, they have clear marketing needs that we feel we can meet and, along the way, have an immediate impact upon the organizations.”

Previous recipients of the grant include: The Second Chance Horse Rescue, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Pitch in for Baseball and 10,000.