Grantees Center LGBTQ People Pushed to the Margins to Lead Policy and Culture Change
January 22, 2019
The grantees of the winter funding cycle are focused on a variety of key areas, from LGBTQ human rights and racial justice to work with faith leaders and the media, to ensure that the most vulnerable groups are represented and protected.
The Astraea Foundation is receiving a grant to support its International Trans Fund, a trans activist-led initiative and a component of the Global Trans Initiative that makes grants to under-resourced trans-led groups. Another grant will support its LGBTQ Racial Justice Fund, which is working with groups in the southeastern United States to improve the quality of life for LGBTQ people of color, strengthening campaigns against police violence, the abuse of trans people in prison, and transphobia in public schools. A further grant will ensure that its Intersex Human Rights Fund continues to assist work promoting the human rights of intersex people.
Also working in the area of human rights is the Network of African National Human Rights Institutions, which will support increased reporting of human rights violations from LGBTQ communities to National Human Rights Institutions in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, and South Africa. The Eastern Caribbean Alliance For Diversity and Equality is working on safety through community training and will use its grant to support advocacy and movement development, including litigation and documentation at national, regional, and UN levels, and an annual LBT women’s conference.
In the religious arena, Church World Service will expand its Kenya and South Africa Safe Space Program, which works with faith leaders for the inclusion and safety of LGBTQI+ refugees and asylum seekers. The organization highlights the ways these populations are disproportionately affected and works to amplify voices for inclusive laws and policies.
Meanwhile, Many Voices will help create a national movement for gay and transgender justice from within the Black Church in the southern United States. It has developed programs that work with faith leaders who are champions of LGBTQ inclusion, both within the church itself and in the wider community.
Southerners on New Ground, which is comprised mainly of people of color, immigrants, and working class people, will use its funding to advance LGBTQ rights through both statewide and regional alliance building as well as grassroots advocacy efforts. Also working with people of color is the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which will use its grant to address the needs of low-income trans and gender non-conforming communities and communities of color. The project works to create meaningful political participation by increasing access to basic means of survival and safety from violence.
The Freedom Center for Social Justice is working to advance LGBT, racial, and economic justice by increasing safety, protections, and social inclusion for LGBT people in the southern United States. The National Center for Transgender Equality focuses on the most marginalized and place transgender people of color at the center of its work. It will work to facilitate a strong and clear voice for transgender equality in the United States by empowering transgender people to educate and influence policymakers. Borealis Philanthropy, meanwhile, will use its funding to increase the leadership and visibility of LGBTQ young people organizing for change across social justice movements.
Several partners are focusing on media coverage, with National Public Radio using its grant to cultivate the public will for LGBTQ rights in the United States by ensuring that news coverage of LGBTQ-related issues and controversies is complemented by resource-intensive features. In a similar vein, the International Lesbian and Gay Association works to achieve change through advocacy for public policy change and media, among other areas.
Also receiving grants this funding cycle are Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, UHAI EASHRI Company Limited, La Red Latina Luterana Por Diversidad (administered through the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), Parliamentarians for Global Action, and Ujamaa Centre for Community Development and Research.
