By: Aileen Balahadia
Reflecting on our grantees this quarter, our N2N team saw a theme of similar systemic issues being tackled, utilizing different and creative strategies tailored to the various needs of our diverse communities. We saw three groups focused on “Sustainability” and what it looks like for our neighbors and streets when environment, transit, and climate solutions work to undo past harms and center the experiences of Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities. Each of these grassroots efforts organizes people for change, knowing that our communities’ very survival and resilience rely upon mutual aid, community power-building, and policy change.
Whose Streets, Our Streets! is a multi-generational, youth-led effort to impact community safety laws and regulations in the City that haven’t necessarily had community leadership co-designing alongside them. The group approaches issues around transportation and traffic enforcement with a pro-equity, anti-racist framework to envision a safe, thriving place for BIPOC communities without simply relying on the police. N2N will fund this group to develop further and support their leadership committee’s needs, conduct community education/outreach, and share their participatory research on Automated Enforcement in BIPOC communities, which highlighted that while cameras have helped improve safety, they have also exacerbated other forms of systemic harm in terms of criminalization and poverty.
Juneau Street Resilience Hub wrote their very first grant ever to N2N to support the needs of BIPOC Beacon Hill residents who have been long impacted by racial and environmental injustice. With the increased need for climate resilience, as the frequency of climate emergencies increases, the goal for the Hub is to create community connections and strengthen the community’s ability to respond to crises using mutual support within their neighborhood. N2N will support this group to learn about the power of Resilience Hubs, invest in a leadership group to steward the work, and celebrate the neighborhood through a block party event, sourcing Hub ideas such as a community tool library, community garden, and other climate justice resources.
And The Giving Room Project, located at the Africatown Center for Innovation and Learning, is a returning grantee seeking support for their series of “Share and Repair” community events anchored at their multi-use South Seattle site. The mission of The Giving Room Project is to help serve BIPOC communities in South Seattle to reconnect families by giving freely to one another and to meet unmet needs. They do this to promote environmental sustainability, reduce landfill waste, and reduce family expenses. This BIPOC-led group coordinates donations, volunteers, workshops, and the exchange of gently used or repaired goods such as furniture, clothing, kitchen appliances, and other recycled materials.
We’ve learned from these groups that sustainability for our communities requires thoughtful, local approaches that make steady progress, engage local frontline communities as the leaders and drivers of the work, and eventually target policy efforts that meet the needs of those most impacted by climate injustice. N2N is proud to support these efforts.
The full list of N2N Spring 2024 grantees can be found below:
Spring 2024 Grants
- Afghan Advantage*: To build neighborhood learning communities in Kent area apartment complexes to support isolated pre-literate Afghan women through community engagement, literacy, and life skills.
- Building Resilient Inspired Communities of Color: To facilitate healing and learning circles for Black men and boys in White Center in order to foster trust, healing, & learning on impactful community issues.
- Cell Block Talk**: To produce a series of podcast episodes that challenge mass incarceration, poverty, and trauma- led by those impacted and within the criminal justice system and featuring BIPOC leaders in South King County.
- Concord Elementary Native Indigenous Students Club: To provide support for the club at Concord Intl Elementary in the greater South Park community to build intergenerational community through cultural activities such as Native/Indigenous foods, storytelling, singing, building drums and beadwork with the help of local elders.
- House Our Neighbors Education Fund*: To facilitate listening posts with BIPOC communities in South Seattle whose lived experiences bring skepticism of public housing. It’s important to listen and learn as we come together to shape social housing to serve communities most in need.
- Immigrant Bridge Resource Center**: To educate and empower Somalis and Muslims in SeaTac/Tukwila about the importance of voting rights, voter education and civic engagement.
- Juneau Street Resilience Hub**: To support the leadership of BIPOC residents of Beacon Hill/South Seattle, to create a resilience hub to support residents as they navigate climate emergencies by forming strong communities, providing resources and education.
- Mothers Impacting Lives Everyday: To support a Black and brown girls empowerment cohort “I’m HER” in Kent/South King County focused on self-love, healing centered practices, mentorship, developing leadership and voice.
- Refugee Community Building Conference Planning Committee*: To support South King County refugee leaders to deepen their leadership and plan to execute the refugee community building conference in September and a legislative advocacy day for refugees in early 2025.
- Roxhill Kings and Queens**: To support BIPOC Roxhill Elementary families in White Center/West Seattle to produce digital stories to show community assets and priorities. The process will build families’ relationships, social capital & collective power and the product will inform future family engagement.
- Serve Ethiopians WA: To empower immigrant members of the East African community in SeaTac/Tukwila by organizing and educating them on how to advocate for their housing rights and to secure affordable housing options.
- South Park Early Learning Cooperative**: To foster grassroots, supportive environments for Latinx expecting parents in South Park/South Seattle through organizing activities, reading and conversations, painting, early stimulation, and celebratory baby showers.
- The Giving Room Project: To empower South Seattle BIPOC neighbors to reduce waste, share resources, and build community by repairing and redistributing clothing and other items in a series of “Share and Repair” community workshops.
- West Hill Community Association: To establish the West Hill Business Association (WHBA) to provide networking opportunities and support the growth and sustainability of at least 40 Skyway-West Hill business owners, the majority of which are BIPOC owned.
- Whose Streets, Our Streets*: To support a BIPOC led committee in South Seattle formed to advance community safety using a pro-equity, anti-racist framework and committed to advocating for transportation and transit enforcement equity and community climate resilience.
- Zia Larson’s Ray of Light Fdn*: To raise awareness and support for Black mental health/illness at a Gathering of Light Symposium in South Seattle that will build partnerships for trauma recovery post-event, and act as a catalyst for a middle school art therapy program in Seattle to start 2025.
*indicates a first time N2N applicant
**indicates the first time the organization has written a grant application
For more information about Neighbor to Neighbor (N2N), please contact Aileen Balahadia, Director of Grantmaking and Community Engagement, at 206.515.2106 or [email protected]. The quarterly deadlines for N2N are January 30, April 30, July 30, and October 30.
Image Credit 1: Whose Streets, Our Streets! group photo
Image Credit 2: A volunteer in front of the Giving Room trailer, used to transport recycled goods, with the communal bicycle.