Racial Healing and Justice Fund – 2nd Cycle Grantees
Congratulations to all of the 2nd Cycle Racial Healing + Justice Fund Grantees!
The 2nd Cycle of the RH+JF marks another key milestone in our regional pursuit of Racial Healing + Justice. With $394,489 in funding distributed to 20 unique grant partners during this cycle, St. Louis’ communities of color are continuing to increase their power, reclaim their power, and make their voices heard.
Please join us in celebrating and supporting each grantee, and their projects that are helping to shape the future of Racial Equity for Black and Brown St. Louisans.
An Update Regarding Fiscal Sponsorship:
During the Racial Healing + Justice Fund’s design process, feedback from community organizers, healing practitioners, and residents resoundingly indicated that the Racial Healing + Justice Fund must be accessible to people who do not have 501(c)(3) status.
For its second granting cycle, the RH+JF partnered with Missouri Jobs with Justice to create equitable Memorandum of Understanding agreements (MOU’s) and provide the fiscal sponsorship support to three initiatives that do not hold or are working to obtain their 501(c)(3) status: MO Ho Justice, Visual Movements LLC, and WERQFest.
Moving forward, we will provide fiscal sponsorship for exceptional community initiatives that align with the priorities of the RJ+HF and qualify for funding, but don’t have 501(c)(3) status. Our hope is that this will remove barriers to funding and increase support for community, business, and outreach initiatives that support healing and justice in the St. Louis region.
Scroll down to learn more about the RH+JF grantees, and how their projects will shape the future of Racial Equity for Black and Brown communities in the St. Louis area.
Meet the Grantees
- The African People’s Education and Defense Fund
- ASK Films*
- Arch City Defenders Inc.
- Black Girls Do STEM
- Catholic Urban Programs
- The Community Reach
- Cornerstone Corporation
- Creative Reaction Lab
- Employment Connection
- Happy Home Foundation
- Haven of Grace
- MO Ho Justice*
- Missouri Faith Voices
- Park Central Development
- The St. Louis Black Repertory Company Inc (The Black Rep)
- St. Louis Queer Plus Support Helpline*
- Ujima
- Unleashing Potential
- Visual Movements LLC*
- WerQfest*
*Denotes a fiscally-sponsored initiative
The African People’s Education and Defense Fund
About the Project:
The African People’s Education & Defense Fund (APEDF)’s African Women’s Health Program is designed to alleviate the trauma women and children face in Black communities due to a lack of access to, and control over healthcare. The program addresses the mental and physical health of girls’ and women’s health care, and provides prenatal, birthing, and post-natal care, drawing from traditional, collective approaches to health care with roots that go back to Africa.
Photo via: The African People’s Education & Defense Fund
ASK Films*
About the Project:
ASK Films third and newest film project will tell the story of families in the 63106 ZIP code over the course of the pandemic, shedding light on issues of systemic and racial inequities.
Photo via: ASK Films
*With Fiscal Sponsorship from Before Ferguson Beyond Ferguson
Arch City Defenders Inc.
About the Project:
ACD’s Community Collaborations Pillar (CCP) seeks to capitalize on the momentum and relationships that they’ve built with their partners over the past several years, by collaborating with community partners around shared values and supporting the building of grassroots power. This project is aimed at propelling a people-powered movement to transform public institutions, and to create conditions of wellbeing in marginalized communities.
https://www.archcitydefenders.org
Photo via: Arch City Defenders Inc.
Black Girls Do STEM
About the Project:
The STEM Saturday Academy exploratory learning program is centered on exposure to career pathways, and triggering increased curiosity through deliberate education access and opportunity in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in the minds of Black girls in every community. This includes walking students through the scientific method, design engineering process, data science processes, and other design thinking frameworks as it relates to a variety of integrated STEM careers.
Photo via: Black Girls Do STEM
Catholic Urban Programs
About the Project:
CUP will engage the healing and transformative power of story and artistic
expression by 1) creating “SELF”, a documentary film and community-voice case study on the issue of self-sufficiency and the barriers to it, and 2) designing a large mural in East St. Louis that captures the community voice as
expressed in the filming of SELF.
https://catholicurbanprograms.org
Photo via: Catholic Urban Programs
The Community Reach
About the Project:
The Community’s Reach’s Black Motherhood Village was created to provide new and expecting mothers with mental, emotional, social, and parenting support through free or low- cost services provided by the Community Reach and partnered community members. The program seeks to decrease stigma
surrounding healthcare, increase visibility of doula services and black mental health providers, and support black maternal mental health.
https://www.thecommunityreach.org
Photo via: The Community Reach
Cornerstone Corporation
About the Project:
The Cornerstone Corporation is a West End Christian Community Development Corporation (CDC), who will deepen its impact and involvement in the West End neighborhood of St. Louis over the next 10 years by annually providing high quality affordable housing for 50 families, and impacting 1,500 West End residents through economic empowerment initiatives, whole-person support services, and championing choice and dignity.
Photo via: West End Plan
Creative Reaction Lab
About the Project:
Creative Reaction Lab’s Community Design Apprenticeship Program (CDAP) recruits formerly incarcerated and criminal justice system impacted Black and Latinx youth, and trains them as apprentices to become equity-centered
civic leaders in the greater St. Louis community. Through prioritizing individual and community healing, engagement as revolutionary leaders, and providing the social and economic resources for successful reentry, CDAP is building a sustainable community engagement model, decreasing recidivism rates, and designing healthy and racially equitable communities.
https://www.creativereactionlab.com
Photo via: Creative Reaction Lab
Employment Connection
About the Project:
In connection with their Cure Violence (CV) program, Employment Connection seeks to pilot a new Healing Table Talk Project that will bring behavioral health services into communities as place-based healing sessions for residents. CV teams will solicit input from residents during their regular neighborhood canvassing, which will determine the parameters of the Healing Table talks. EC will arrange to use local community gardens /green spaces whenever possible, to capitalize on the healing properties of nature.
Photo via: Employment Connection
Happy Home Foundation
About the Project:
To help ensure that ensure that citizens are provided with the proper education and information that will allow them to be successful in their neighborhoods and help defeat the racial gap in housing equity, Happy Home Foundation’s Tenant Education Program is geared specifically towards the tenant (in particular tenants from marginalized backgrounds), and providing them with all of the information and resources they will need to properly manage a home and eliminate rates of evictions.
Photo via: Kindle Media on Pexels
Haven of Grace
About the Project:
Haven of Grace’s “Whole Mind – Whole Future” Initiative will help to layer the organization’s mental health supports throughout their houseless/impoverished person care programs, with particular attention to prenatal care for their clients who are young Black women, as well as the needs of their staff.
Photo via: Haven of Grace
MO Ho Justice*
About the Project:
Mo Ho Justice is a sex worker advocacy coalition working to shape policy, amplify the voices of sex workers, and remove stigma by ending the criminalization and incarceration of sex workers, and make Missouri a safe place for trans folks and sex workers to exist. They will use their RH+JF award to fund the resources needed to improve the health and wellness of sex workers in the greater St. Louis area by offering a weekly drop-in center for sex workers of all types at The T— a health education and resource center in the East Loop of Delmar Blvd.
Photo via: Mo Ho Justice
With Fiscal Sponsorship from Missouri Jobs with Justice
Missouri Faith Voices
About the project:
“This Is My Story” is a project that will continue Missouri Faith Voices’ work in decentering trauma and curating spaces that foster healing and hope. With two planned quarters of deep listening campaigns focused on the stories of families impacted by gun violence and/or COVID-19, the project will demonstrate the power in telling one’s own story and centering the journey to healing through the trauma of being Black in urban America.
http://www.missourifaithvoices.org
Photo via: Missouri Faith Voices
Park Central Development
About the project:
Park Central Development will enhance resident power by and improve quality of life through the Golden Access. This program is a grassroots collaboration with local neighborhood organizations and stakeholders to deliver critical product and educational resources that give holistic alternatives to mothers, babies and single fathers with newborns, utilizing the organization’s community resource counseling program as a vehicle. The program provides focused supportive services to Black and Brown mothers who must contend with a lack of traditional pediatric support, and face displacement in redeveloping and gentrifying communities.
https://parkcentraldevelopment.org
Photo via: Park Central Development
The St. Louis Black Repertory Company Inc (The Black Rep)
About the project:
Using RH+JF funding, the Black Rep will increase the capacity of its Company Professional Fellowship program. This 45-year old program continues to provide critical support and leadership opportunities for recent college graduates and young theatre professionals making the transition from academia to a career in the arts.
Photo via: The St. Louis Black Repertory Company Inc.
St. Louis Queer Plus Support Helpline
About the project:
The St. Louis Queer Plus Support Helpline (SQSH) aims to increase their capacity to strengthen the St. Louis QTPOC (queer and trans people of color) community by providing empathetic listening, connections to identity-affirming resources, and advocacy services. Their services include offering free peer Helpline counseling, free virtual peer counseling drop-in clinics during peak stress seasons at least once a year, and expanding opportunities for QTPOC members to express grief and process trauma—especially when Black trans women are murdered—and more.
Photo via: St. Louis Queer Plus Support Helpline
Ujima
About the project:
Ujima is a non- profit pay-what-you-can service provider that provides equitable access to food, education, and employment. In 2021, Ujima will launch Project Salsa, an urban agriculture apprenticeship program that will teach entrepreneurship to under-served teens in St. Louis. Participants will grow, make, and sell salsa—learning how to grow a food business from the ground up while providing for the community.
Photo via: Ujima
Unleashing Potential
About the project:
Unleashing Potential’s School Aged Services program represents an expansion of its Building Resilient Families Program (BRF), which was created to intentionally provide educational workshops to families in the St. Louis region, including information on community resources for advocacy, health and wellness, and supportive content to bridge relationships between schools and families. These family support services help children and caregivers relieve stress, learn effective parenting strategies and build protective factors that will improve their capacity to exit generational poverty.
Photo via: Unleashing Potential
Visual Movements LLC
About the project:
Visual Movements LLC seeks to uplift the real life narratives of Black and Brown people through their upcoming documentary entitled ” I Am A Man”. The film will shine a light on the unique struggles that Black men have been forced to grapple with during the pandemic, and under current criminal justice systems. The production house will engage Black and Brown creatives to complete this project, with a target release date of Fathers Day 2022.
https://www.visualmovements.com
Photo via: Visual Movements LLC
*With Fiscal Sponsorship from Missouri Jobs with Justice
WerQfest*
About the project:
WerQfest uses the power of arts and entertainment to create safe spaces for and amplify artists, organizations and voices within the Black queer community through a curated series of programming. Their flagship project, WerQfest, is a cultural festival celebrating the Black, queer, trans & non-binary community, and features performances by St. Louis Black queer artists, and award presentations for individuals and organizations committmend to Black LGBTQ+ service. Proceeds raised from WerQfest benefit an organization or cause working in St. Louis to provide resources for underserved and Black communities, especially LGBTQ+.
Photo via: WerQfest
*With Fiscal Sponsorship from Missouri Jobs with Justice
