News + Events
Grant of $2,000 to Verde, Portland, OR
Verde serves communities by building environmental wealth through Social Enterprise, Outreach and Advocacy in Portland’s Cully neighborhood. Verde operates Outreach and Advocacy programs, including the Living Cully collaboration of four nonprofit organizations that focus on the low-income, diverse Cully neighborhood of NE Portland.
Verde’s Rapid Response grant request Verde requests $2,000 for a response event (Cully Stands Together) to racist graffiti on a local church and diverse urban school in NE Cully neighborhood. The Cully Stands Together event will be at Trinity Lutheran Church in the NE Cully neighborhood on Saturday, July 8th. The event responds to a recent hate crime in the Cully neighborhood, namely the defacing of Trinity Lutheran Church and its adjacent school. On April 21, 2017, Trinity Lutheran staff discovered that racist graffiti and images had been spray painted on to walls of the church and the school and playground equipment. In response, the Cully Stands Together event will bring together the community in a celebration of the neighborhood’s diversity. Cully is a low-income community with important populations of Latinos, African refugees, and African-Americans, among other diverse groups. Cully Stands Together will unify the neighborhood through a day of performance, speeches, and neighbors sharing time together to show support for Trinity Lutheran Church and School, to celebrate their community and to reject racist, anti-immigrant sentiment.
Grant of $2,000 to Micronesian Islander Community, Salem, OR
Micronesian Islander Community’s (MIC) mission is to unite all Micronesian and Islanders, promote social justice, build the leaders of tomorrow, and promote and preserve our culture.
The Micronesian Islander Community Rapid Response grant request will support a series of Know Your Rights training-for-trainers workshops for the COFA and Pacific Islander community. MIC writes: “Our rapid response project addresses our communities fears about racial profiling, being arrested, and detained, and deportation by ICE agents… Recently, several key leaders within our community have received letters from immigration services to attend hearings from crimes they committed 20+ years ago. Those key leaders have since been detained, and to my understanding, are in deportation hearings. Further, there continues to be concern and confusion about law enforcement officers and racial profiling, since many of our COFA and Pacific Islander community members immigration status are mistaken as being in the U.S. undocumented… The project includes providing two workshops for our community by a facilitator on Knowing Our Rights… The funds will be used to pay a modest stipend to the facilitator and to the attorney, and provide food, refreshments, and quality childcare to attendees.”
Grant of $1,000 to Indian People’s Action, Butte, MT
Indian People’s Action works in Montana’s border towns and reservations to empower Montana’s Indian families to address the economic, racial and environmental inequities that shape their lives. Founded in 1996, IPA works to achieve its mission by training and developing low-income Native American leaders, working to build strong coalitions and partnering with tribes, other Native organizations, and other progressive organizations in Montana.
This Rapid Response grant is to support Indian People’s Action’s urgent efforts to become fiscally independent, necessitated by unanticipated changes in IPA’s fiscal sponsorship status. IPA will use these funds to expedite their 501(c)(3) application to pursue their goal of being an independent Native-led organization. IPA writes: “The aftermath of Sacred Stone [a camp of water protectors resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline] and the dismantling of other camps in North Dakota has resulted in a period of re-evaluation for many grassroots Native groups. The ways in which we have operated in the past may not serve us moving forward… Increasingly, Native-led and Native-focused nonprofits are seeking independence from fiscal sponsorship to maintain transparency for our grassroots stakeholders…we are seeking an independent nonprofit for Indian Peoples Action so that we can continue the work we are doing.”