Opportunity Fund – The Rising Foundation https://therisingfoundation.org Cooperating for a Better Tomorrow Sat, 22 Jun 2024 13:57:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://therisingfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/favicon2.png Opportunity Fund – The Rising Foundation https://therisingfoundation.org 32 32 Feed Black Futures https://therisingfoundation.org/2024/03/28/feed-black-futures/ Thu, 28 Mar 2024 00:00:53 +0000 https://therisingfoundation.org/?p=2824 The project by Feed Black Futures (FBF) seeks to address systemic racism and oppression that have led to limited economic opportunities, food apartheid, and over-policing in Black communities. FBF aims to catalyze Black community interdependence by providing financial and labor support to install edible home gardens for Black Trans, cis women, and Gender Non-Conforming (GNC) caregivers. Through partnerships with Black regenerative farmers and social enterprise training workshops, the project empowers participants to grow their food, develop business skills, and access market opportunities. FBF also plans to implement a cooperative communication platform to facilitate community connections and market access. By leveraging ancestral knowledge and fostering economic empowerment, FBF endeavors to combat food insecurity and promote self-sufficiency among marginalized communities.

]]> Youth Co-op Connection https://therisingfoundation.org/2023/07/06/youth-co-op-connection/ Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:00:39 +0000 https://therisingfoundation.org/?p=2808 Acta Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Project’s (ANV) mission is to elevate life for youth and their families in Oakland and beyond by challenging oppressive dynamics and environments through urban farming and access to the natural environment. Founded and led mainly by women and People of Color, ANV engages youth and families in safe and creative outdoor spaces in Oakland and the East Bay, CA. ANV strengthens young people’s understanding of nutrition, food production, healthy living, and the natural environment, and strengthens their ties to their community.

The Youth Co-op Connection project focuses on cooperative education, in practice, necessitates active learning, self-directed inquiry, and hands-on experience. It promotes learning that is relevant and connected to the lives of young individuals, nurturing their ability to question, analyze, and challenge the status quo, in collective action. This project centers underserved Black youth and will offer a nuanced and comprehensive open source curriculum for cooperative education, catered to middle school age youth. The curriculum design will be adaptable and applicable across diverse education settings, including public schools, youth entrepreneurship programs, alternative education settings, and after-school programs.

]]> Agroecology Commons https://therisingfoundation.org/2022/09/26/agroecology-commons/ Mon, 26 Sep 2022 00:00:26 +0000 https://therisingfoundation.org/?p=2733 Agroecology Commons cultivates knowledge sharing, community action, and global solidarity for decolonized land stewardship, collective healing, and justice within the food movement. We are building infrastructure for our incubator farm that provides participants from Agroecology Commons’ Farmer Mobilization, and annual Bay Area Farmer-to-Farmer Training a portion of the land to grow crops, hone skills, and launch their farm dreams with mentorship and cooperative support. The incubator farm offers shared infrastructure, tools, materials, and seeds while creating opportunities for beginning farmers to be in right relationship with land, place, and culturally appropriate food. For years to come, this farm will be covered with ancestral crops from around the world including Sierra Leone, Iraq, Philippines, Italy, and Japan to name a few; songs in many languages will be sung, and people will be cooperatively tending, growing, and learning together.

]]> Safe Place International https://therisingfoundation.org/2022/08/11/safe-place-international-3/ Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:24 +0000 https://therisingfoundation.org/?p=2648

SafePlace International has three years of experience working to meet the needs of DMRs in Greece and other parts of the world. Greece’s bleak economic environment has meant an unemployment rate of twenty five percent, making it especially difficult for DMRs to find work. In order to assist DMRs to be competitive in a job market that excludes a significant proportion of the local population, let alone migrants, SPI has established the Dream Academy and expanded on the vocational and skills training provided in the ACC to support DMRs with attaining the skills they need to be successful in gaining employment.

The Community Center currently serves as the hub for DMRs in Athens, offering individual casework sessions to all beneficiaries, daily Greek and English language classes, basic maths and financial literacy classes, weekly workshops facilitated by fellow community center residents or partner organizations (previous workshops include dance, theater, community organizing, yoga and meditation), trauma-focused counseling, and comprehensive vocational training which encompasses CV building, computer literacy and programming, physical presentation, and finding opportunities to match skill sets and interests. In addition to the 80 residents that usually reside in the Athens Housing Collective and Moms2Moms shelters, the center welcomes up to 100 marginalized refugees in the greater Athens region daily to access the community center’s resources.

]]> Office for Refuge, Asylum and Migration https://therisingfoundation.org/2022/05/12/office-for-refuge-asylum-and-migration/ Thu, 12 May 2022 00:00:27 +0000 https://therisingfoundation.org/?p=2650

Founded in 2008, ORAM is recognized as one of the first international NGOs to assist people fleeing persecution based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression. It has since become a thought leader in LGBTIQ migration. Our mission is to protect and empower LGBTIQ asylum seekers and refugees globally, creating sustainability and systemic change. Over the last decade, ORAM has trained NGOs, governments and the UNHCR on the unique protection needs of the severely marginalized LGBTIQ refugee population. We have supported thousands of LGBTIQ asylum seekers and refugees from navigating the long asylum process from the moment they arrive in their first country of asylum to being resettled to a safe third country. 

ORAM currently supports LGBTIQ asylum seekers and refugees in Mexico, Kenya and Uganda, as well as supporting LGBTIQ displaced Ukrainians in Berlin, Germany. Our programs in each geographical location are tailored to the specific needs of the community we serve, by ensuring that those with lived experiences are included in all stages of our work. 

ORAM’s main focus is on advancing economic inclusion through livelihood programs, through capacity building and training, in order to build self-reliance; however, we also provide critical emergency response where needed, as well as legal assistance and advocacy through championing the rights of LGBTIQ asylum seekers and refugees on the global stage. 

Supporting Innovative, LGBTIQ Refugee-led Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Programs in Kenya

ORAM’s goal is to empower vulnerable but resilient LGBTIQ refugees around the world.  We do this in Kenya by providing online and in-person skills and capacity building training sessions, as well as providing seed-funding to those unable to access education and training due to their sexual orientation and / or gender identity and expression (SOGIE), as well as their status as a foreigner and refugee.  This way, we enable the community to have a fair chance at finding or creating meaningful employment. Trainings enable them to find placements in local businesses or start their own businesses and generate income to survive on a daily basis, as well as support the wider community. 

]]> Youth Power Coalition https://therisingfoundation.org/2021/11/11/youth-power-coalition/ Thu, 11 Nov 2021 15:24:38 +0000 https://therisingfoundation.org/?p=2081

The Youth Power Coalition (YPC) weaves community, makes information accessible, develops leaders, mobilizes resources, and advocates for youth power. Youth-led collective impact is both outcome and process. The outcome is every Black teenager is safe, every child has housing, every young person can shape the world.

The process is

  1. community-led, particularly by young people most impacted by inequity
  2. comprehensive, recognizing the interdependence of systems, institutions, people, history, and context
  3. co-creative, with people of diverse backgrounds, identities, and perspectives working together
  4. equity-centered, unrelenting in our pursuit of a world in which social, economic, and political outcomes are not based upon a person’s background or identity
  5. well-capitalized, investing generously in community-led change
  6. caring, valuing not just metrics and numbers, but dignity, respect, and belonging
  7. courageous, where we dare to be vulnerable, take risks, and act

We call these the 7C’s of Collective Impact.

Our project is to create a mass training program that equips young people of color and
from low-income backgrounds with the skills needed to organize youth-led collective
impact efforts.

“Mass training is not one big training. Mass training allows for thousands of leaders to join your movement while maintaining autonomy (allowing people to take independent action) and unity (on the key DNA of the movement – the story, strategy, structure, and culture). Mass trainings accomplish the following:

  • Give people the ability to act autonomously through distributing the DNA of the
    movement.
  • Replicate and scale – everything in the training program from the curriculum to the roles to the support structure is systematized in order to grow exponentially while maintaining quality.
  • Provide transformative leadership development experiences, such that participants leave with a transformed understanding of themselves as leaders, and a new vision for what’s possible.” —Mass Training Webinar, Momentum Movement

We will have created a mass training program when we have

  1. A standardized curriculum
  2. A cohort of young people and adult allies to lead training sessions
  3. The infrastructure to support 10,000 people joining the youth-led collective impact
    movement at any given time

 

]]> Masiyembo https://therisingfoundation.org/2021/01/25/masiyembo/ Mon, 25 Jan 2021 14:05:36 +0000 https://therisingfoundation.org/?p=2032

“Masiyembo” is an isiXhosa word that most simply translates as: “Let’s go back to our roots”. Yet, as several local  elders note, it also has a deeper soul-resonant meaning which speaks of a profound remembering of the human spirit, our shared values and deep connection with all life.

The Masiyembo Association is a diverse collaboration of professional nature/wilderness
guides, outdoor facilitators, mentors, and artists from across South Africa.

We are committed to providing more:

  1. Opportunities for (historically disadvantaged) South Africans to find meaning, connection and well being through immersive nature experiences.
  2. Members with a supportive peer-to-peer network that enhances the exposure and quality of experiences they provide, including the capacity to train others in facilitation.
  3. Advocacy around the importance of nature connectedness and outdoor therapeutic interventions for healthcare and beneficial psycho-social outcomes.

Our Members utilize immersive experiences and connective nature-based processes to reawaken and revitalize our relationship with earth and each other. Specifically, we are:

  1. Bonded by a commitment to care, contribute and deeply connect with all life
  2. Motivated by a desire to learn and share our passion, experience and knowledge
  3. Inspired to co-create more opportunities for people of all backgrounds to find
    nourishment and wellbeing through nature, and for the benefit of nature.
]]> Opportunity Fund https://therisingfoundation.org/2020/06/19/opportunty-fund/ Fri, 19 Jun 2020 16:45:17 +0000 https://therisingfoundation.org/?p=1313 In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, The Rising Foundation is proud to announce the creation of a $500,000 designated fund. This new fund, named the Opportunity Fund, is dedicated to providing grants to individuals and organizations who are addressing systemic racism in communities of color.

Much has been happening over the past weeks in our country and around the world, exposing a broader level of systemic racism. We appreciate the voices who have come together around the Black Lives Matter movement, we support you 100%. While the response of All Lives Matter may be true on the surface, it diminishes the hidden pandemic, that systemic racism exists, who it is impacting and it is costing lives! We acknowledge those in government and law enforcement who’ve responded to community demands.

We at the foundation are dedicated to creating systemic change through our practice of “cooperating for a better tomorrow.” We believe through partnership and investment in communities of color, creating opportunities, real systemic change will occur. Over the course of the coming months we will be engaging our network to develop application criteria and focus areas for these funds. By creating strategic partnerships we will ensure that the use of these funds will truly benefit those impacted by racism. The details of this will be posted on our website, https://risingfoundation.org in the near future. Anyone wishing to participate is encouraged to contact us at the email address provided.

As a California based 501(c)3, anyone can make donations to the fund.  100% of all donations will be used to provide grants through this fund. Your donation is fully tax deductible as allowed by state and federal law. Contact us at the email address provided for details on how to donate.

We are proud to be doing our part in shifting the system and joining the Black Lives Matter movement.

]]>