Bay Area Community Advised Fund announces new grants!

The BACAF Organizing Committee recently awarded its second round of grants to three amazing Bay Area based groups.

The three new BACAF grantees are the Homies Empowerment Program, Pride At Work SF, and the Liwanag Kulturak Center.

The Homies Empowerment Program was born out of a need for a safe space for youth from rival gang neighborhoods to gather together.  It now serves as a space for Oakland youth to think critically and engage in dialogues around social justice issues. 

Homies Empowerment provides a wide range of programs, including Raza/Latino history classes, weekly Unity Gatherings called “Homies Dinners,” educational field trips, case management and counseling, and support for undocumented students.  In the past year, Homies Empowerment has brought youth from Oakland to places as far as Mexico, and has hosted Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, Homeboy Industries founder Father Greg Boyle, Hip Hop Emcee Immortal Technique, and others.

The Liwanag Kultural Center is a volunteer run, grassroots, Daly City based Filipino community organization.  They provide culturally relevant educational, leadership and artistic development opportunities for the Filipino community. 

Filipinos living in the United States currently lack meaningful access to information about their heritage, the issues that face their community, and options to share their life experiences with others.  The Liwanag Kultural Center seeks to provide Filipino youth with the tools needed to foster positive and healthy self-identities, empower them with the skills to help them organize themselves to address community needs, and provide creative avenues for community members to share their stories with the world. 

San Francisco Pride At Work is the Bay Area chapter of a national organization born out of the 1974 Coors Boycott, when gay and lesbian labor activists joined with Teamsters to organize against the company’s anti-black, anti-Latino and anti-gay hiring practices.  The incredibly successful boycott made possible a new kind of solidarity between the labor movement and the LGBT movement. 

They are currently engaging young LGBT activists in a variety of economic justice campaigns, including organizing for housing and tenant rights, supporting migrant rights by supporting the local Sanctuary Ordinance and sending delegations to Arizona to support No More Deaths, and supporting various labor struggles, including reaching out the LGBT community to support the UNITE-HERE Local 2 hotel workers in their boycott of local corporate hotels. 

The BACAF Community is proud to be supporting these incredible organizations!!!