The Resilience Fund, a collaborative partnership among the Greater Washington Community Foundation, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, and other foundation and individual contributors, awarded its first grants last week — three grants totaling $110,000 to community organizations working throughout the region to support immigrant communities. Grants were awarded to:
Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition — $30,000 to support community education and legal services, and the organization’s role as convener of the DMV Immigration Alliance
Casa de Maryland — $30,000 to support community education, legal services, and policy advocacy
Legal Aid Justice Center — $50,000 to support community education and legal services through the members of the Northern Virginia Immigrant Legal Services Providers Coalition
The Resilience Fund was created by The Community Foundation and the Meyer Foundation in early 2017 to address critical needs of nonprofits working to support our region’s vulnerable communities during a period of rapid federal policy change.
The three initial grants reflect the Resilience Fund’s early focus on changes in international travel, immigration, and deportation policies that are affecting residents and families in the Greater Washington region. The DC metropolitan area has 1.3 million foreign-born residents, including an estimated 400,000 unauthorized immigrants — many of whom are long-term residents with deep community ties, including spouses and children who are U.S. citizens.
These grants will help the region’s networks of immigrant-serving organizations expand their collaborative work to ensure that community members understand their legal and civil rights, take precautions to stabilize their families in the event they are detained, and receive legal representation.
Share Your Ideas
As the Fund’s steering committee considers further work in this area, as well as future areas of focus, members welcome input from a wide range of stakeholders about how federal policy shifts are currently affecting our region. The committee has created this form so that representatives of nonprofit organizations, businesses, government, and community residents can provide input on current and future areas of focus. The steering committee will review all comment submitted, and is especially interested in hearing about efforts to fight intolerance and build community cohesion. Please use this form to share your ideas and thoughts with us.
Join us!
The Resilience Fund was launched in early 2017 with an initial goal of $500,000, and has so far raised nearly $400,000 in gifts and commitments from foundations and individual donors — although the breadth of policy changes affecting the region may lead us to increase our goal. Join with us and others who seek to ensure that our region’s communities are resilient and supported in spite of federal policy shifts by contributing to The Resilience Fund. More information is available here.