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OrganizationApplication Summary
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Todos Juntos Learning Center ($10,000)Dual-Generation Community Learning:
At Todos Juntos we believe that true school-readiness is achieved when a child has a caregiver in their life who feels safe, confident, supported - especially confident enough to help their children navigate school and life. At Todos Juntos we focus on comprehensive services because we know that parents need support by way of compassionate learning communities that can help empower and inform so that they can advocate for their children because no one will fight for a child the way their parents will. The Mi Familia & Me program delivers a culturally relevant and evidence-based parenting program that empowers parents to transform their strengths into the tools they need to build solid educational and social foundations for their children. This program brings parents and children together to learn together and play together. The weekly class currently supports the joint development of families, while promoting stability and self-sufficiency. During this time, parents discuss various parenting topics, are engaged in their child’s weekly literacy theme and then participate in a fun and educational activity completed as a family. Partners provide additional support through a variety of programs to enhance learning and promote bonding. Mi Familia & Me stresses the importance of family and parental adherence to being responsible for their children’s future. The program teaches parents to become more intentional in their parenting as they develop goals for their children and their families. Parents learn strategies to support their children and become confident in their parenting. Parenting self-efficacy (i.e., parents’ perceptions of their own ability to influence and impact their child in a positive way) is positively correlated with childhood success, and Mexican-American mothers’ self-efficacy, in particular, has been shown to predict reduced behavioral problems in adolescent children (Dumka, et. al., 2002, 2010).
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Interfaith Action of Central Tx (iACT) ($10,000)Integration of Older Refugees
iACT's mission is to cultivate peace and respect through interfaith dialogue, service and celebration. Our existing refugee program teaches English as a Second Language to adult refugees through a grant from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. Every adult refugee arriving in Austin is referred to our program to learn English. We have been serving adult refugees of all ages since 2002. Our present ESL classes already welcome older refugees, but they share classes with their younger counterparts. This is beneficial to a degree, however, those older clients learn at a much slower pace and have other additional needs. So they will benefit more from additional programing created specifically for them. It is necessary for seniors to have a place to go to each day, to learn at their own pace and find what interests them to do in Austin. This project will be a pilot project that we aim to find funding for and continue in coming years. The project will offer at least 10 clients, 150 hours of programing specifically geared for older refugees and asylees living in Austin. This is over and above the English classes they can access indefinitely.
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Workers Defense Project ($10,000)Workers Defense: Immigrant Worker
Texas construction workers—most of whom are Latinx immigrants—consistently suffer poverty-level wages, dangerous working conditions and abuses of their rights. According to a 2013 study by WDP and the University of Texas, more construction workers die in Texas than in any other state. Workers Defense Project has addressed these problems for almost two decades by empowering Latinx workers and immigrant families to advocate for better, safer jobs and become leaders in their communities. Since its founding in 2002, WDP has emerged as one of the leading advocates for low-wage workers in Texas, especially for Latinx immigrant construction workers, who comprise most of the organization’s membership. In 2021 and beyond, WDP’s Organizing program is continuing to empower low-wage and immigrant workers to effect systemic change through education, leadership development and advocacy. Specifically, the program is conducting the following activities in Austin in 2021: Workers' Rights Trainings, Safety Training, Advocacy & Campaign Training, and a Leadership Institute
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AFTV Five (AFTV5) ($10,000)African Community Resource Center
African Community Resource Center is being established to provide assistance to underserved community members, non-profit organizations and small businesses that sometimes could use a little help to meet basic needs. We specifically had African immigrants in mind when designing programs for the center. The following assistance programs are designed to help immigrants integrating and navigating the period of transition and establishing a plan for development, managing stress, responsibilities and others. The following programs are designed to immigrants navigating life changes, establishing a plan for professional development, managing workplace stress and responsibilities and others:

A. Employment Assistance
• Mailing Address – to allow the use of our office as mailing address;
• Office & Work Space - to provide work space in our office with access to Internet and computer resources;
• Insurance Enrolment – to assist with health and life insurance enrolment
• Job search - to assist with job application;
• Webinar, Trainings and Workshops – to educate empower and close the digital divide.

B. Mentoring Services
African Community Resource Center has distinct mentoring programs to match caring adult volunteers with referred immigrants with the understanding that successful, sustainable mentoring programs add to immigrant’s lives. We create mentoring programs that works for each participant unique needs:
• At-Risk - Immigrants and their mentors participate in a structured program of support. At-Risk mentoring focuses on Immigrants who are new to the community and may have language problem. At-risk community member and their mentors participate in structured program that includes monthly team building and group activities. The mentor and immigrants work together for some months.
• Turnaround - Turnaround focuses on immigrants who are in difficulty as a result of a negative live event and need temporally help to get back to his feet. The goal of this mentoring program is to kindle the immigrant's commitment to learning and being successful in his/her new life as immigrant. By empowering and surrounding the immigrant in a caring and inclusive learning environment mentors are improving the immirant’s success in life
• Higher Ground Mentoring Assistance - Higher Ground engages mmigrants involved in the court system. The mentoring relationship is utilized to establish a program of change in the immigrant’s life. The mentor encourages goal-setting, self-discipline, and skill development that improves the immigrant's sense of hopefulness. Mentors and immigrants work one on one for a year and are also offered opportunities to participate in monthly group activities and outings.
• Lunch Friends - Lunch Friends works with new immigrants in the Austin community. Adult mentors come weekly to have lunch with their "friend." The program lasts or as needed and may go for up to year.
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El Buen Samaritano Episcopal Mission ($10,000)LEAD Program
Funds requested will allow El Buen to provide a holistic approach to service delivery for women to enrich, reinforce, and strengthen their education, as well as achieve economic security. By targeting educational programming, we will engage the women we seek to serve and then wrap services around them that provide a comprehensive support network to address multiple facets of their life – including housing and basic needs assistance, financial and workforce assistance, childcare, and health care services, in addition to the educational programming that serves as the cornerstone of their experience with El Buen. We recognize that women come to us with multiple needs and challenges, that often create barriers to their successful engagement in our programming. Research and best practice, indicates that a comprehensive program design, addressing an array of needs increases the engagement and retention of women in educational opportunities. There is no doubt that how well we integrate and create access for Latinas will determine the fate of Texas and our nation in the 21st Century. El Buen’s history serving Austin’s Latino and immigrant communities, longstanding reputation as a trusted source of information, and institutional resilience provide a unique capacity to serve Latina immigrants. Our recognition of community need, particularly as amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, has resulted in collaboration with the City of Austin (RENT, RISE) and strategic infrastructural investments at El Buen. We have invested in a drive-through “contactless” facility, a call center, database systems, dual fiber internet, and increased computers and skilled bilingual staff. El Buen is committed to a continuous process of quality improvement that is grounded in our client’s feedback and authentic engagement. This, in turn, informs our service delivery methods and programming. El Buen is well positioned to seek additional funding that will provide a holistic /comprehensive approach to serving Latina immigrants. Our current infrastructure, core competencies, and experience serve as a catalyst for us to reinforce our adult education programing through the implementation of LEAD.
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Latinitas ($10,000)Latinitas: The Future Is Chica
Latinitas serves 2000 girls, teens (9-18) and their parents annually in Central Texas, 3000 across the state and now through remote programs, nationwide and internationally. Its mission is to empower all girls to innovate using media and technology with a vision to create courageous leaders. Exclusively in underfunded schools, Latinitas after school clubs, camps, conferences, teen certification and parents’ tech literacy programs serve as a pipeline of new and diverse voices into Austin’s most lucrative economic sectors. Leveraging free computer labs and internet at 150+ public schools, housing sites, libraries and cultural centers, Latinitas has provided culturally relevant STEM access and training to more than 40,000 since its origin in 2002, 100s of thousands of free teaching hours. The Future Is Chica: Equipping Austin’s Latino Immigrant Families with 21st Century Skills and Support is about continuing those efforts for parents, but also working on the long-existing systemic inequities that COVID just amplified. Austin is #1 for tech, startup we are still nicknamed the “Third Coast” for production. We are the world center for gaming tech and it feels almost weekly a global tech giant decides to headquarter here. Yet, less than 3% of employees in these industries are women of color, less than 1% LatinX. Latinitas was designed to combat this lack of representation. COVID demonstrated that those who could work remotely were also safer from exposure. In some ways preparing Austin’s immigrant community - its parents and children - is not just about digital equity, but health and well-being.
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AACHI ($10,000)Health Navigation Capacity Building
Our goal is to provide consistent and continuous resource navigation services for marginalized Asian and Asian American communities. We aim to achieve this goal by staffing two Community Health Navigators (CHNs) for each community we serve. Our current program services are provided in 8 different languages by six full-time and one part-time Community Health Navigator. This includes Vietnamese, Nepali, Hindi, Korean, Chin Tedim (a Burmese ethnic group language), Chinese (Mandarin), Burmese, & Arabic (spoken by Syrian, Iraqi, and Irani participants). Apart from the Korean community, there is only one CHN available to each targeted community with some navigators providing services in multiple languages and to different communities (e.g., the Arabic language). This means when a CHN is unavailable, their community is left without support for days, weeks, or even months depending on the circumstances (e.g., illness, paid time off, or departure from the organization). The Austin Asian Community Health Initiative (AACI) is one of the only organizations in Central Texas to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate social services to vulnerable communities within the diverse population. Since 2016, our Community Health Navigation (CHN) Program has worked with marginalized Asian American communities in Central Texas to overcome barriers to local, state, and national support services and resources. These resources enable not only access to health care, but other social determinants of health like socioeconomic status, education, neighborhood and physical environment, employment, and social support networks. Addressing social determinants of health is necessary for improving community health and reducing disparities in health and health care. To enable access these resources, our team of Community Health Workers provide interpretation/translation support, referrals to other services, eligibility & application assistance, community outreach, transportation, skills training, and health education.
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Interconnecting Arabs, Muslims & Middle Easterners (I-AMM.org) (5K)
I-AMM Healing Circles
I-AMM Healing Circles have filled a mental health gap for Arabs, Muslims and Middle Easterners in the City of Austin and this grant will be used to pay the trainers/facilitators (we've been volunteering so far) and our social media marketing team to help scale the program and make the circles more accessible to the communities. Our project is in alignment with the values of the reimagining Public Safety Task Force as our work is rooted in equity, accessibility, collaboration, transparency and accountability to community members. We focus on systems of oppression like racism, patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism/imperialism. We believe that bringing people together and collaborating to create a holistic community safety net means centering our programs to meet the needs of those most directly harmed, like our Black community members, women and our LGBTQ siblings. We also know that as far as mental health internal work is concerned, internalized racism is our biggest barrier to wellbeing. As a people we have taken on the hierarchical understanding of human value and internalized white supremacy and much of our daily decisions and general understanding of who we are is affected by this conscious or unconscious filtering mechanism. To remedy this lack we have created a space where twice a year, for 16 weeks, on Monday nights, via zoom (for the time being), a cohort of up to 15 AMM folks come together in a healing journey. We piloted this workshop during the pandemic to amazing success and are attaching a letter from a very influential community leader and workshop participant who can attest to its powerful results. The once a week, 2-hr workshop allows for a 10 minute teaching section, and then several group therapy and one-on-one sessioning opportunities between members in breakout rooms where we name and discharging about, not only the oppressive structures we have to navigate on a daily basis, but also strategies to overcome the patterns and beliefs we have taken on. 1) Naming, discharging on and feeling unburdened by internalized racial, gender, colonial/imperialist and capitalist oppression and 2) sharing stories and strategies for living as if the structures can't hold us down are two of the most important goals of these workshops. The ultimate goal is help alleviate the mental health gap for our community members.
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SAIVA ($10,000)Advocacy and Engagement
Advocacy: We would like to conduct 5 more case studies and gather the topics into book/ publish to help the city and advice solutions that are possible

Having the information will help connect partners and connect so solutions can be solved intergenerational manner

Community Building: We would like to conduct this in 2 language groups and replicate from the Dari speaking one we did

Intergenerational Program: The intergenerational program we would like to replicate from SAIVA's model and would like to expand in the Burmese and Vietnamese speaking community

We hope this helps bring well being and information in language to the Vietnamese, Hindi/ Urdu speaking communities, and Burmese communities. This will also help us identify the gaps
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Truc Viet ($9350)Truc Viet Immigrant Support Program
Truc Viet’s Vietnamese Immigrant Support Programs aim to address the cultural, political and language barriers in the Vietnamese community within the Greater Austin Area. Of the 8% of Asian Americans that call Austin home, 10% are Vietnamese. However, ~73% of Vietnamese reported in 2018’s Austin’s Asian-American Quality of Life survey that they were Limited English Proficient (LEP), which can mean that many Vietnamese are excluded from critical services and civic activities. In accordance with Austin's Strategic Direction 2023, Truc Viet aims to provide cultural and lifelong learning to the Vietnamese community along, ensuring they have the linguistic and cultural understanding to engage in their local government and advocate for their wellbeing. Truc Viet is able to support Austin’s Vietnamese community through Truc Viet’s Vietnamese Immigrant Support Programs. Through these programs, Vietnamese immigrants are able to 1) learn practical and conversational skills in English, 2) prepare for their USCIS Naturalization Interview and Test and 3) learn more about and engage in their local government through our translated civics educational resource and events. By being able to provide these opportunities and resources, Vietnamese immigrants living in Austin will be welcomed and supported by the Austin Vietnamese community as they integrate into American society in Austin.
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ProyectoTEATRO ($10,000)ArtesAméricas: Latino Arts Academy
ArtesAméricas is a Latino Youth Arts academy that provides bicultural and 1st generation Latino immigrant children of low-income households with award-winning fine arts training in theatre, dance, and visual arts. This cultural arts program is free to all children ages 6 through 17 and is presented entirely in Spanish by local and international Latin-American artists representing a myriad of Hispanic nationalities. ArtesAméricas drives a multi curricular pedagogy that utilizes devised theatre, musical theatre, contemporary dance, hip-hop, and visual arts as tools to create original performance social art that explores issues specific to the Latino immigrant experience. The Spanish-immersion environment motivates children to preserve their Latinx background while introducing new children to the rich cultures of Latin America. Each semester of ArtesAméricas closes with a community performance that unites immigrant communities of multiple nationationales together to celebrate the diverse cultural background of all Latin-America. ArtesAméricas is driven to ensure that all Latinx children, have a healthy platform to emotionally express themselves and to explore their artistic potential. In a time where the political environment is toxic and hostile against immigrant communities, Latinx children need to find spaces that strengthen their self esteem and applaud their heritage. Spaces that nurture their roots and show them the value of their heritage. ArtesAméricas was established to raise the quality of life of all of our Latinx underserved-populations that live in the political shadows of the US.
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