Local groups receive grant money from Harbus Foundation

Helping underachieving high school students raise their test scores to go to college.

Buying books for a growing library at a pilot middle school.

Providing support for an innovative job training initiative for low-income families.

These programs, and others like them, are being rewarded for their excellence by the Harbus Foundation, an offshoot of The Harbus student newspaper at Harvard Business School (HBS). The Foundation has awarded its latest round of grants, totaling $106,000, to 11 Boston-area community organizations dedicated to improving the lives of local children and teenagers.

This year’s recipients include the Hyde Square Task Force, in support of its Youth Serving Youth program, supporting Latino students in the neighborhood. “The Harbus Foundation support has allowed us to train teenagers to become literacy coaches,” according to Claudio Martinez, the task force executive director. “That helps make our after-school program a place where reading takes first priority.”

Three teachers at Brighton High School were awarded a $6,000 grant to fund their SCORE Higher program, which helps motivated junior and senior students improve their scores on college preparatory tests.

“The school has a very small budget for this type of activity, and it’s not something that’s central to our curricular goals, but it’s an extremely important service to the kids,” says foreign language teacher Toby Romer. Several students involved in the program have been accepted at top schools, including Boston College, Brandeis University, and the University of Massachusetts.

Other grant recipients this year include the “Bill of Rights Education Project,” which publishes a youth newspaper; the Harbor School in Boston, which is expanding its library; the F. Lyman Winship School, which is creating seven “in-house” libraries; and the BELL Foundation, which runs an after-school tutorial program in the Johnson Mann School in Allston.

The East End House in Cambridge, Women Express Inc., the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corp., the Boston Arts Academy, and “One With One” are this year’s other grant recipients.

The nonprofit Harbus Foundation was formed three years ago by a group of HBS students at The Harbus who were charged with determining how best to utilize the newspaper’s surplus funds.