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Join us for the next quarterly meeting of GCIR’s Legal Services Working Group, where we discuss how we can continue to strengthen the legal services infrastructure in California. Note that Legal Services Working Group meetings are only open to grantmaking institutions and philanthropic advisors.
Join the next quarterly meeting of GCIR’s California Immigrant Integration Initiative, which facilitates funder engagement, funding coordination and alignment, and member-led initiatives, creating opportunities for funders to leverage the collective impact of their grantmaking and fortify the immigration funding field in California. CIII is comprised of statewide, regional, and local funders from across the state.
As discussed in GCIR’s program, Building Immigrant & Worker Power in Rural America, immigrants and refugees add to the diversity of rural communities and help mitigate the negative impacts of a rapidly aging population while also enlivening local economies. The availability of work in manufacturing and agriculture has contributed to the considerable growth of immigrant populations in these communities, with nearly 75% of all farmworkers in the United States being foreign-born.
Racial capitalism is one of the major factors that inflicts harm upon – and withholds power and resources from – people and communities who seek to stay, move freely, work, transform, and thrive. GCIR is focused on moving money and power to immigrant, refugee, and asylum seeker communities and movement groups. Understanding the proportion of philanthropic dollars that go to the immigrant justice movement is crucial to this advocacy. The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) has documented the state of philanthropic funding for immigrant and refugee communities, and offers crucial recommendations for grantmakers who hope to liberate philanthropic assets in support of these communities.
Philanthropy has often conflated narrative change work with strategic communications, one-directional communications campaigns, or story projects that may have short-term effects but fail to transform cultural norms. Instead, narrative change means shifting our world view. As Pop Culture Collaborative’s Bridgit Antoinette Evans shares, narratives are all around us, “influencing everything about how we live, see, and think about ourselves in the world.” Narrative change involves the creation of a new story and communicating that story to audiences in ways that resonate with them, putting the new narrative into practice, and evaluating the efforts of that narrative shift and adapting it accordingly. The goal is to transform “the ecosystems of narratives, ideas, and cultural norms that shape the behaviors, mindsets, and worldviews of millions of people” – to transform “whole narrative oceans.”
Find all program-related materials for GCIR's webinar "Welcoming Houston: Providing Support to new Immigrants in Texas" here, including session recording and powerpoint.
In her final quarterly message of 2022, GCIR President Marissa Tirona shares her reflections and key takeaways from the midterm election results, including political wins for immigrants and refugees, communities of color, and working families across the nation. She also highlights upcoming GCIR programming that will help philanthropy gear up for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Find all program-related materials for GCIR's strategy session "DACA in the Balance: Mobilizing to Protect Our Communities" here, including recording, PowerPoint, and other materials.
Find all program-related materials for GCIR's webinar "Promoting the Health and Wellbeing of Immigrant Workers in Rural Communities" here, including the session recording and PowerPoint.
Find all program-related materials for GCIR's webinar, "Transforming the Funding Landscape for the Immigrant Justice Movement" here, including the recording, PowerPoint, and other materials.
Join GCIR and a panel of network stakeholders as we delve into a brand-new report which synthesizes lessons learned from the DOTD network over the past ten years and provides recommendations for future philanthropic collaboration.
Join GCIR and movement leaders in this webinar for an analysis of the root causes of migration for Black immigrants and refugees, how they are working to build power domestically and transnationally, and how funders can support this diverse community.
In this webinar session – a part of GCIR’s series on rural power building – we will explore how detention in rural areas is harming communities; challenges to obtaining legal representation; and how local, state, and national organizations are confronting the harmful impacts of immigration detention on communities across the country.
Find all program-related materials for GCIR's webinar "Narrative Change and Power-Building Strategy Session" here, including the session recording and PowerPoint.
This brand-new report synthesizes lessons learned from the DOTD network over the past ten years and provides recommendations for future philanthropic collaboration.
Join us for the next quarterly meeting of GCIR’s Legal Services Working Group, where we discuss how we can support and strengthen the immigration legal services infrastructure in California. Note that Legal Services Working Group meetings are only open to grantmaking institutions and philanthropic advisors.
Find all program-related materials for GCIR's "A Decade of DOTD: Building the Movement through Funder Collaboration" webinar here, including the session recording and PowerPoint.
Find all program-related materials for GCIR's "Strategies for Resisting Immigration Detention in Rural America" webinar here, including the session recording and PowerPoint.
As I reflect on what brings me to this work, I am reminded that these roots run deep. As a Puerto Rican brought up in the United States, I was raised with an awareness of our nation’s history of colonialism and at times violent intervention in Latin America and beyond. I saw how the U.S. government had fought to ensure that the political and economic arrangements in Latin American countries suited its own interests, while then abdicating responsibility for the resulting destabilization.