Reaffirming Our Commitment to Community Resilience
/After the election results were announced, we shared a statement about standing against hate, oppression, and racism. We committed to stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with our community to encourage safety and a sense of belonging with Better Health Together (BHT.) We see the threats of mass deportation of undocumented people, threats to shut down the border, end asylum-seeking policies, and a dehumanizing removal of citizenship through a denaturalization program. We also see continued efforts to directly target the trans community's rights and access to health and safety. For those who live at the intersections of these identities, the risks are often compounded by overlapping forms of discrimination, making the need for equitable and inclusive policies even more urgent.
We recognize that true solidarity is demonstrated through actions. That is why we remain committed to working alongside the immigrant and trans communities, following their leadership, and addressing the challenges they face with concrete actions. As we have often noted, saying the words isn't enough; it's our action to demonstrate our commitment that matters.
As our final Board action of 2024, the Board allocated the remaining funds in our Community Resiliency Fund (CRF) to respond to shifts in federal policies toward the immigrant and trans communities that face imminent risk.
The Board had a robust set of conversations about the actions to take.
We know that our contribution is small compared to the need. We recognize that there is far more need than just legal support; there is also a need for basic needs services, healing, and resiliency support, and many organizations are doing vital work to support many communities. We call on philanthropist organizations from around the region, the state, and the nation to step up to provide support.
We're honored to announce the final allocations from our Community Resiliency Funding:
•$79,200 to Mujeres in Action
•$79,200 to Spectrum
•$79,200 to Latinos en Spokane
•$79,200 to Manzanita House
•$79,200 to Unidos Nueva Allianza Foundation dba UNA
We know this is a hard time. We have appreciated these words of inspiration by Desmond Tutu's words, which ground us in our shared humanity and commitment to the well-being of our community: "I am human because you are human. My humanity is caught up in yours. And if you are dehumanized, I am dehumanized."
We have also found inspiration in the The Hummingbird Parable (click here for link) which reminds us to do the best we can, no matter the size of the challenge.
With gratitude and appreciation for the hard work of our community,
~BHT Board
Background
During Waiver 1.0, the Board allocated 10% of funds earned in Waiver 1.0 to a Community Resilience Fund. The Board directed these funds to Address Racism as a Public Health crisis. Since 2020, BHT’s Board has continued to allocate funds to the Community Resiliency Fund (CRF) to address and prevent the impacts of racism as a public health crisis in eastern Washington. The CRF was designed to remove barriers for community-led organizations and create opportunities to drive systemic change. To help close the gap in inequitable funding patterns, the BHT board voted to prioritize awarding grants to organizations led by and serving impacted populations.
We know that our contribution is small compared to the need. We recognize that there is far more need than just legal support; there is also a need for basic needs services, healing, and resiliency support, and many organizations are doing vital work to support many communities. We call on philanthropist organizations from around the region, the state, and the nation to step up to provide support.
With the final allocation above, we will have awarded $7M to more than 100 organizations since 2021. Moving forward, the Community Care Hub will continue to connect folx to the resources they need to thrive and prioritize serving those with the highest level of health disparities.
Updates from 2023 Awardees: How Grant Funds Fueled Innovation and Impact
In 2023, we awarded $2M to 22 community-based organizations having leadership, Board, and/or staff comprised of at least 50% impacted persons*. All the organizations serve and/or advocate for persons with intersecting identities who have been negatively impacted by systemic and institutionalized racism. We are excited to share how the 22 awardees allocated their funds and the impact they were able to have on their communities. Read on to learn about the organizations and their accomplishments.
*BHT uses the term impacted communities to refer broadly to all groups that have been impacted by systems of oppression, such as Black, Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQA2S+, currently or formerly houseless, disabled, justice-involved, low-income, refugee/immigrant people, and more groups that face systemic inequity.
FORGE
FORGE serves low-income individuals residing in Eastern Washington, with a special focus on engaging minorities, vulnerable adults/seniors, refugees, and those justice-involved. They provide eviction prevention and criminal history rehabilitation to decrease systemic barriers to housing security.
The funding helped support the Holistic Advocacy Program (HAP) that Forge is running which has vacated over 80 charges totaling more than $200,000 for clients.
Feast World Kitchen
Feast is a restaurant and catering nonprofit co-founded, co-led, and co-operated by immigrants and former refugees. They provide resources for self-identified needs, including job training, start-up tools, and a place to sell food and represent their cultures.
The $100,000 Community Resiliency Fund grant allowed Feast to create more opportunities, especially alongside women who are affected by trauma, war violence, and domestic violence.
They have been able to hire full-time staff to support Table Time, a volunteer and community health worker (CHW)-run program that uses case management and trauma-informed approaches to help immigrants and refugees navigate systems.
The flexibility of the funding allowed Feast to plan strategically to support the chef participants. During the grant period, chefs' take-home net revenue was more than $1.4M.
Health and Justice Recovery Alliance (HJRA)
HJRA is a community-based organization designed by Peers and Community Health Workers. It was founded to address the gap of services and support by and for BIPOC people facing mental health challenges with a Peer service delivery model. HJRA supports people experiencing destabilization or crisis, walking alongside them and supporting their pathway to wellness.
The funding will help them continue the important work they which includes peer navigation training, peer-to-peer recovery support, Strengthening Families, maternal and infant support, Peers at the Front Door, a youth advisory council, recovery housing addressing homelessness/housing insecurity, and homeless outreach with basic needs resources.
Nuestras Raíces
Nuestras Raíces is on a mission to promote and serve business growth, professional development, education opportunities, cultural preservation, and social justice for the Hispanic/Latinx community in Spokane County.
They offer 3 interconnected programs. Esperanza (HOPE) is a social service and wellness initiative that advances food security, family healing, mental health, and LGBTQ support for adults, youth, and families. This program also integrates Cosechando Esperanza (Harvesting Hope), a Hispanic Food Pantry that provides culturally relevant foods, hygiene products, and diapers to Hispanic families.
Nuestras Raices used the funding to:
Support their food pantry and clothing bank.
Fund internet supplies for behavioral health work.
Send two social workers to a social work professional development conference.
Helped hire an operations manager to support the development of their Othello office.
Latinos en Spokane
Latinos en Spokane’s mission is to build capacity within Latino immigrant families and support the advancement of Latino community members, leaders, business owners, and organizations in Spokane.
Their organization also serves as a catalyst for immigrant rights and fights for social, racial, economic, and environmental justice to build a more equitable Spokane County.
Latinos en Spokane used the funding to:
Support the expansion of a commercial kitchen and the equipment and furnishings to outfit it.
Support the pilot program with Ensueño Driving School to provide a FREE driver education class and driver testing conducted in Spanish for community members.
Manzanita House
Manzanita House is devoted to creating space where all immigrants have a place at the table to freely and fully participate in community. Current programs include Manzanita Immigrant Legal Aid (MILA), Outreach & Education, Language Program, and the development of a new Cultural Education & Implementation Program (CEIP).
Manzanita House used the funding to:
Provide heritage language classes, training, and other opportunities not funded by other grants including hiring teachers, purchasing snacks, materials, etc.
Rent an office at the NE Community Center. They now have three spaces and continue to grow.
Mujeres in Action
MiA is Spokane’s first and only organization dedicated to serving survivors of domestic violence and/or sexual assault from the Latinx communities. They provide culturally-responsive healing and survivor-centered support free of charge, while also serving as advocates in healthcare, legal, education, and immigration systems.
Mujeres in Action used the funding to:
Build internal capacity to support families
Obtain a three-year contract with building changes for housing
Receive housing vouchers
Help 11 families, 9 of which received housing through SHA
Place folx in emergency housing
NAACP Spokane
NAACP SPOKANE has long committed to anti-racism in the City of Spokane and the Inland Northwest for 104 consecutive years. While locally they continue to align with the national commitment to help black America thrive, at NAACP Spokane, they believe there is a dual and equally important responsibility to build stronger relationships and partnerships between Spokane's Black community and the Spokane African-born refugee community.
NAACP Spokane used the funding to continue the Challenging the Narrative series and produce a biannual learning symposium in which they bring together Spokane's Black and African-born refugee community and the Spokane white community for shared learning and community building.
Northeast Youth and Family Services
Northeast Youth & Family Services (NEYFS) is a family resource center committed to empowering generations by providing access and support to children and their families in Northeast Spokane. To better connect children, youth, and families to resources in the community.
NEYFS used the funding to expand and open a satellite office in the Logan/Chief Garry Park neighborhoods, which houses the Spokane Creativity Project. The site includes a food bank, kitchen, and community garden where children and families will grow food to include plants grown in other countries (homelands).
Operation Healthy Family
Operation Healthy Family (OHF) is a grassroots organization with a specific focus on building access to oral health care, living wage jobs, and opportunities to exercise for BIPOC, low-income, and marginalized people in Spokane.
OHF used the funding to launch the Community Career Prep For All pilot, a technical education and job training program. The funding paid for equipment (including gym equipment for recruitment and dental equipment to create a training mock dental office at our location) and funded a salary for a worksite coordinator, who coordinates career training, then places youth in internships and supervises youth. So far, four youth have completed the career training program
Pacific Islander Community Association
PICA’a mission is to establish a cultural home, center community power and further the wellness of our communities physically, culturally, socially and spiritually.
PICA used the funding for their Oceania Leadership Institute. This antiracist community-led training series will further expand our communities' networks, uplift Pasifika voices, train NH/PIs as antiracist organizers and continue to build internal and social resistance as a way towards healing and transformative change in solidarity with our intersecting BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled siblings.
Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane (PJALS)
PJALS engages everyday people to build a just and nonviolent world through community organizing and grassroots leadership development. PJALS is organizing the unorganized to build collective power led by impacted people for structural transformation. Our organizing priorities are to end mass incarceration and systemic racism in the local criminal system, counter white nationalism, and advance inclusive democracy and investments in healthy and thriving communities.
PJALS used the funding to:
Support the Building, Organizing Leadership Development (BOLD) Project. The project prepares people to have tools to persuade and move people, to fuel a paradigm shift in our community about how we conceive of racism, moving from the frame of “group-to-group conflict” to “racism as a tool of power.”
Support the No New Jail and Smart Justice Spokane: As a founding member of the 10-year-old Smart Justice Spokane coalition, PJALS will continue a lead role in organizing against mass incarceration by engaging within the bounds of our 501c3 status to defeat the November 2023 ballot measure.
Raze Early Learning and Development Center demolishes the divisive and traumatic current narrative of the Black student in education. They prioritize family engagement and partnership by first acknowledging the parent as the cornerstone teacher. Secondly, by addressing Maslow's Hierarchy of needs – through community partnership and resources, Raze ensures that students are in optimal positions to reach their full potential.
Raze used the funding to help support the launch of Raze-Primary, the first location serving ages 0-12 and will operate in a neighborhood identified as a childcare desert. Raze-Primary will serve 130 children and their families, and will provide 35 evening care slots with capacity to expand. Raze has plans to expand to a second facility in year 3. Raze will reserve 60% of the childcare slots for Black American families and 60% of childcare slots for people living in poverty.
While the main Raze facility is not yet open, they have been able to launch a mental health program in partnership with local childcare centers, serving over 300 students and 75 teachers. This program has seen a 40% reduction in behavioral incidents and improved staff job satisfaction.
Revive Center for Returning Citizens
Revive Center is rooted in advocating for the justice-involved population. They are a peer-led organization that provides training and support to individuals and families to start healing from trauma so they may reenter their community with opportunities and social connections.
The funding supported a year of the Core Competency and Race Re-education training, which is a 40-hour training that includes Identifying Trauma, Motivational Interviewing, ACEs, implicit Bias, Cultural Competency, and Race in America and the Criminal Justice System. Revive Center Facilitated four 40-hour workshops with 68 attendees who completed the entire training.
Salish School of Spokane (SSOS)
At Salish School of Spokane (SSOS), we believe that efforts to improve the lives of Native American people in Spokane must begin with the preservation and revitalization of traditional language and culture. Our culture, language, and kinship systems are the key to our success and health as individuals and as a community. There are only three first-language Salish speakers left in the world.
Programs at SSOS include: Salish language immersion preschool and family support services, Salish immersion cultural K-6 schooling, kʷu sn̓ʔiwl̓x Enrichment Program for Native Youth aged 14-20, evening and weekend Salish language and culture classes for parents and community members, school-based intensive Salish language teacher training program, development of Salish language curriculum materials, and language revitalization training and assistance for other indigenous communities.
SSOS used the funding to help support:
The overall capacity of the school and its immersion programs for students, their families, and the community participants at large.
Gathering and preparing traditional Salish foods at Root Fest.
Navigating capital campaign with Catholic Charities.
Investment in mental health services for staff, students, and families.
Shades of Motherhood Network (SOMN)
SOMN centers Black mothers and birthing people through education, empowerment, and community to use their voices, cultural care and awareness, art activism, advocacy, and data collection to eradicate health inequities. The purpose of this work is to raise up Black women as doulas and provide support and care for birthing people who are Black for immediate health equity progress. The project will use outreach, empowerment, storytelling, training, and data collection to achieve this.
SOMN used the funding to help support:
Black Maternal Health Week events in 2023
13 Doulas which served 44 families
1 Doula dad
The delivery of 500 wellness boxes (Partnered with Four Roots)
The completion of 2nd-year peer support groups averaging 10 people every Tuesday and Thursday
Coordination with Indigenous Birth Justice on doula advocacy work
Spectrum Center Spokane
Spectrum is an inter-sectional and inter-generational organization advocating and serving the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. They are committed to creating Queer joy, safety, comfort, and belonging so that they reduce the horrible and broad impact of colonial and capitalistic violence on our communities, which leads to high suicide rates, abysmal healthcare outcomes (particularly for BIPOC and Trans identities), and isolation.
Spectrum Center Spokane used the funding to continue and build on creating Queer Indigenous programs and spaces, Queer Black programs and spaces, and Queer POC (non-Black and non-Indigenous POC) Programs and spaces. They were able to hire full time staff, develop a Gender doula program, and support lots of people moving here from less accepting communities
Spokane Pride
Spokane Pride has served Spokane’s LGBTQIA2S+ community since its inception in June of 1992. Until 2023, Pride has been completely run by its unpaid volunteer Board. This included the massive lift of putting on Spokane’s Pride event each year, facilitating competency workshops, serving on economic development committees, consulting for smaller pride organizations, and even holding vaccine clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The $100,000 Community Resiliency Grant allowed them to hire their first paid Executive Director! This year, Pride has been able to hold monthly events, partner with SAN to open a community center, start a Facebook group—Inland NW Pride network—to create a support network and share resources and develop other funding sources for the organization.
The Way to Justice
The Way to Justice’s mission is to pave the way to justice through community empowerment, advocacy, and access. We carry out this mission by providing direct legal representation and advocating for policy changes.
The funding supported the core programs of Post-Conviction & Re-Entry Services, Blake Civil Impact, driver relicensing, justice nights, and youth empowerment, with a goal of serving 600 people.
Yoyot Sp'q'n'i
The long-term goals are to reduce domestic violence and housing insecurity within the Indigenous community and help Indigenous people reconnect or connect with their culture. This will be done by providing a safe shelter for Indigenous individuals experiencing domestic violence/Intimate partner violence. Then, focus on culture and trauma-informed healing groups and programming with classes like wellbriety, beading, traditional medicines and gardening practices, and ceremonies like sweats and smudging.
The funding helped support the following at Yoyot Sp'q'n'i:
Support over a dozen participants
Develop relationships with multiple partners
Host cultural events and domestic violence awareness events
Joined MMIW taskforce
Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition/Fuse Innovation Fund
The Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition’s long-term goals include making Spokane a more welcoming place for all immigrants by passing policies at the federal, state, and local levels. We work closely with partners in state and federal coalitions, including the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, the Protect Immigrant Families Coalition, and the Health Equity for Immigrant Coalition, to create this change.
SIRC used the funding in the following ways:
To increase client reach, supporting over 300 individuals in 2024.
To connect folks to community-based organizations that are providing SDOH needs
To give food vouchers to BIPOC-owned businesses in Spokane
To help connect folks to employment services
Həłmxiłp Indigenous Birth Justice
Indigenous Birth Justice supports Indigenous women during pregnancy, childbirth, parenting, coming of age, and menopause. An Indigenous Birth Justice Center houses office space for staff and volunteers, a gathering space for community and teaching events, storage for supplies such as traditional medicines and foods, and space for Indigenous doulas to meet with clients and their families.
With the funding, Indigenous Birth Justice was able to open the center, host training and events, and create plant medicine, lactation circle, and play for babies. They have also paid for a doula for five families.
