Earlier this month, the Change Consulting team came together for a two day retreat to rest, eat amazing food, try out new things, spend time together, and continue the hard and infinitely rewarding work of building this community. Thanks to our team members who made it out — more of this in 2023, please!
Client News
Barbara Lee’s campaign for U.S. Senate is gaining momentum in key regions of California through endorsements like that of the California Working Families Party. Sky Allen, executive director of Inland Empire United, explains that these endorsements will make a huge difference in raising awareness about Lee’s candidacy and platform through one-on-one conversations with community members in the Inland Empire for the San Francisco Chronicle.
This week, Akonadi Foundation announced the newest grantee partners from the So Love Can Win Fund. The fund provides general support grants of $10,000 to Oakland’s Black, Indigenous, or people of color-led groups and organizations who seek to ignite and implement a radical collective vision of freedom and racial justice. The awarded projects use strategies that include local racial justice organizing, art and culture, healing and wellness, and journalism or narrative change. For a full list of So Love Can Win grantee partners, and to learn more about their work, visit https://akonadi.org/congratulations-2023-so-love-can-win-grantee-partners/.
“A stronger Fresno is ours to build.” In a new piece for the Fresno Bee, Miracle Jackson, a community leader and entrepreneur, shares her personal experiences and challenges securing affordable housing in Fresno, which had the highest rent increase in the country during the pandemic. In addition to advocating for rent control measures, she affirms her belief in the power of community organizing to make real, sustainable change — and in the power of the youth advocates driving the Fresno United for Rent Control and Power California to achieve it.
Despite evidence that immigrants’ contributions to our community are essential, and the extreme and blatant hardships immigrants faced during the pandemic, anti-immigrant rhetoric and xenophobia are on the rise. In 2020, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund shifted their strategy to further center immigrant rights as a pillar of their grantmaking and programming. According to Robert Joseph, vice president of programs, the Haas, Jr. Fund sees “immigrant rights as central to building a California where everyone belongs.” More at Philanthropy News Digest.