Grantee and Investee Partners

Grant – Project Support

Established with a vision of creating a just and equitable Calgary for all, ActionDignity is a community-based organization that amplifies the collective voice of ethnocultural, racialized, and equity-seeking communities, with a mission to collaborate with those communities and create transformational changes. Its approach is focused on catalyzing collective impact by building the capacities of grassroots ethnocultural organizations to strengthen their communities and bring about systems change.

This new grant builds on the Brave Workers project and will support ActionDignity in further empowering racialized essential workers to better understand and advocate for their rights. The new project will have three main components, including (1) community engagement and capacity-building for racialized essential workers and ethnocultural communities, (2) establishment of a Knowledge Hub and Resource Centre for immigrant workers, and (3) systems change and policy advocacy. With this new project, ActionDignity will expand its reach to 1,500 workers and will direct its efforts toward meatpacking workers from other plants in Calgary, as well as other essential workers, including health care aides.

General Operating Support – Grant

Adama Bah, a community organizer, serves asylum seekers, refugees, and other migrants arriving at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York. She focuses on providing culturally salient wraparound social services for migrants arriving from the border.

Adama focuses her attention on an existing gap in support for Black and Muslim migrants, such as culturally appropriate services related to language access along with dietary, religious, and mental health needs. Additionally, she works in close partnership with Artists Athletes Activists and other community-based organizations to serve migrants upon their arrival at a port of entry, responding to their immediate and basic needs and providing critical information and referrals. Support from the Fund will expand Adama’s capacity to provide emergency services at the front lines and tend to the initial needs of migrants who encounter difficulty accessing resources when they arrive in New York City.

Grant – Project Support  

African Bridge Network’s mission is to create a supportive community that enables internationally educated immigrants in Massachusetts to leverage their qualifications and experience to maximize their potential. The goal is to make reliable information, resources, and networking opportunities readily available to recent immigrants to address skill underutilization among the state’s immigrant population. Reaching beyond the African community to serve all internationally trained immigrants in the state, ABN has become a leading voice for educated immigrants coming into Massachusetts. ABN’s programming and services attract about 350 immigrant professionals each year. 

Even before COVID-19, the human services sector in Massachusetts was facing an unprecedented workforce shortage. To address this issue, ABN plans to create a five-employer consortium to collaboratively address challenges and better support the success of immigrants and workers of color. The consortium will implement programs with a goal of improving the career trajectory of international workers, adopt upskilling policies for workers with foundational skill gaps, and create a workplace leadership mentoring program.

Grant

Alberta International Medical Graduate Association (AIMGA) works to integrate International Medical Graduates (IMGs) into the Canadian healthcare system through various services such as new member orientation, study groups for licensing examinations, career transition programs etc. AIMGA’s vision is to improve healthcare through the re-engagement of IMGs in Canada and support them.  

With this grant, AIMGA is researching alternative health care careers for IMGs, such as allied technical assisting, and educational roles in healthcare and medicine, and working with employers to develop pathways for them to enter these fields. Building on AIMGA’s existing career transition program, this initiative aims to understand the perspectives of employers within those alternative health care careers and the challenges IMGs face in entering those jobs. The employers and IMGs are offered support, resources, and training to ensure the successful employment of IMGs into non-physician health and wellness careers.  

Impact Investment 

Apis & Heritage (A&H) is a BIPOC-led social impact investment firm that plans to disrupt intergenerational poverty and help to close the growing asset inequality gaps in the US by transitioning closely held private companies with meaningful workforces of color into employee-owned enterprises through Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). A&H believes this transition will generate higher enterprise value and create better wages and significant retirement savings for the workforce, while also generating superior risk-adjusted returns for investors 

By investing in A&H’s first-of-its-kind private equity fund, A&H will demonstrate how to transition companies to worker-owned at scale – potentially paving the way for a new market. A&H addresses a clear ecosystem gap in equity capital for business transfers to employees, now commonly identified in the field as a barrier to converting businesses to employee ownership. Moreover, this gap has often prevented employee ownership from being used as an explicit racial equity strategy. Available capital and technical assistance do not meet the needs of owners of color, who may have less liquidity. 

General Operating Support – Grant

Artists Athletes Activists (AAA) is a volunteer-based organization that uses its platforms to take action and raise awareness regarding issues related to health, fitness, wellness, and social justice in marginalized and underserved communities in New York City. AAA emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to a community need for access to healthier foods on the Lower East Side.

With support from the Fund, AAA’s Emergency Response Team is working on the ground, receiving migrants arriving in New York from Texas via the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Megabus stop, and area airports. Upon their arrival, migrants and asylum seekers are provided cooked meals, MetroCards, clothing, and shelter. Additionally, the team provides ground transportation from all major airports in the New York area, mental health support through therapy sessions at a discounted rate, immigrant rights workshops, and information pertaining to upcoming immigration hearings. Alongside meeting material needs, AAA prioritizes treating migrants with empathy and care; attending to emotional needs is often a key responsibility of volunteers.

Grant

The Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) is a non-profit organization whose main objective is to increase knowledge of Canada through conferences, publications, learning materials, and research. ACS organizes the National Metropolis Conference—the largest annual gathering of researchers, policymakers, and representatives from community and settlement organizations working in immigration and settlement in Canada. 

With this grant, ACS is leading national-level consultations with multiple stakeholders within the immigration ecosystem and conducting mixed methods research in order to identify future implications for the immigrant-serving sector. The project seeks to mobilize stakeholders in co-creating solutions that improve the sector’s innovation and operations. The national approach to the project will allow for design solutions rooted in a deep understanding of national priorities and future implications for the sector, but that also reflect the unique contexts and experiences of immigrant and refugee workers in different provinces and territories in Canada. 

 Grant – Project Support

Au Coeur de l’Enfance is an innovative norofit based in Montreal, Quebec, with an integrated model of services providing social, medical, and education support to children and their families, mainly in asylum-seeker and migrant groups with a precarious immigration status. Au Coeur de l’Enfance operates in the Saint-Laurent neighboood of Montreal. This neighbourhood is home to the majority of asylum seekers who settle in Montreal.

With this grant, Au Coeur de l’Enfance will pilot the new service delivery model, which will combine legal with social support, with the intention to scale the model if social impact is demonstrated. Au Coeur de l’Enfance will partner with Clinique de Justice Migrante, a newly established legal clinic and migrant rights advocacy organization, which will provide training on immigration issues to Au Couer de l’Enfance’s social support team and will be offering direct legal counselling to the families served. With this partnership, the Clinique de Justice Migrante will also facilitate access to legal representation for the families Au Coeur de l’Enfance supports.

Co-funding Partnership

Beati Foundation has been providing grants and non-financial support to groups fighting social inequalities and poverty throughout Quebec and has supported more than 839 projects to date. The foundation recognizes forms of systemic oppression and aims to support initiatives based on furthering the common good and geared toward profound social and ecological transformation.

Beati Foundation, through its annual grantmaking process, provides 90,000 three-year grants to grassroots in Quebec to support their staffing needs. In addition, Beati Foundation receives several requests for smaller donations from these groups throughout the year to support their operating costs and immediate priorities. will allow Beati Foundation to increase amounts of funding it offers selected organizations involved in immigrant, refugee-serving, and anti-racism efforts in 2023 and provide additional resources for ad hoc discretionary funding requests by organizations in this category throughout the year.

Grant

Better Way Alliance (BWA) is a coalition of business owners and employers that support decent work practices, such as fair wages, paid sick days and fair scheduling laws. BWA members employ more than 30,000 workers in Ontario and the industries range from services, retail, food and beverage to manufacturing. BWA provides its members with space to discuss decent work practices, supports them in their advocacy efforts, and offers public exposure as decent work businesses.  

BWA is expanding its advocacy, capacity building, and policy change work. They are building on their research to develop a series of action-oriented case studies focused on key issues that racialized, immigrants, and workers in low-wage jobs face when it comes to decent work. Each report will build a business case for specific practices and propose tips and resources on how business owners can implement it into their own businesses. BWA is offering workshops and outreach programs focused on finding employers with decent work practices, especially the ones that are immigrant-owned or employ immigrant workers. These employers will be supported to act as leaders to advocate for decent work and grow the movement.  

Impact Investment   

Blackstar Stability (BSS) is a leading, mission-oriented, Black-owned real estate investment firm. The Blackstar Stability Distressed Debt Fund Program is a private debt fund that seeks to tackle the racial wealth gap and stabilize families and neighborhoods by facilitating ownership of affordable single-family houses, keeping families in their homes, enhancing homeownership, and disrupting predatory lending practices. The Distressed Debt Fund acquires nonperforming loans and contract for deeds at discount, works with homeowners to convert the assets into performing mortgages, and finally sells the mortgages into the secondary market. 

This investment will support BSS’s mission of building wealth through providing increased access to homeownership in immigrant communities, Black and Indigenous communities, and other communities of color that are currently impacted by contract for deeds and other predatory instruments. With this grant, the Distressed Debt Fund will serve 9,000 families and estimates that homeowners in its portfolio will accumulate an average of $29,000 in home equity over a 5-year horizon, helping to grow family net worth and address the racial wealth gap and transferring over $125 million of equity to families. 

The British Columbia Co-operative Association (BCCA) is a non-profit member services cooperative that has served as a hub for cooperatives in British Columbia since 2003. It is where co-ops, credit unions, and community members come together to collaborate and share knowledge to develop BC’s co-operative movements in hopes of creating a more sustainable, equitable and democratic economy. For this initiative, BCCA is partnering with the Alberta Community & Co-operative Association (ACCA), Rural Development Network (RDN), and Women’s Economic Council (WEC).  

BCCA is developing tools and business supports to help immigrants establish and grow successful cooperatives. They are also delivering introductory trainings about the cooperative model for around 60 immigrant entrepreneurs, with a special focus on women and immigrants living in rural communities. The partners will also create a database where stories and case studies of immigrant co-operatives in Canada and beyond will be collected to be used as examples and potential mentorship connections. The initiative will also create an interactive online platform that would be designed as a discussion forum where networking, collaborating and knowledge sharing between learners, co-operatives, and/or support organizations can take place.

Grant – Project Support

Building Skills Partnership (BSP) is a California statewide organization whose mission is to improve the quality of life for property service workers and their families by increasing their skills, access to education, and opportunities for career and community advancement. BSP represents property service workers, the majority of whom are Latinx immigrants in low-wage janitorial positions. Recognizing that the needs of workers go far beyond the workplace, BSP takes a holistic approach and strives to create an equitable future for its clients and their families. BSP currently serves 5,500 workers in California each year, and links responsible businesses directly with the service employees union. 

This grant will help scale BSP’s work and develop new career pathways programs. Amid COVID-19 and as the economy reopens, BSP is undertaking critical efforts to ensure worker safety and help career pathways programs evolve to meet the needs of workers and employers. Because of COVID-19 and the overall need for better safety and preparedness, BSP is developing an industry-recognized Infectious Disease Certification training as a pathway to career and economic mobility. Also, in light of COVID-19, BSP is exploring alternative service delivery models to support workers who have low levels of digital literacy, limited access to Wi-Fi and equipment, and limited English proficiency. BSP’s impactful work with janitors, airport workers, and other property service staff can serve as a model for other organizations looking to create viable career pathways for similar frontline and service sector workers, many of whom earn low wages and struggle to become economically mobile. 

Grant – Project Support

The California Dignity for Families’ Fund (CA DFF), led by Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR), is a collective action fund housed at Tides Foundation. CA DFF’s mission is to provide urgent humanitarian aid at the southern border region, support asylum seekers’ integration into communities, and build power for immigrants who have been historically excluded in policy-making spaces. CA DFF is part of a public-private partnership with Governor Gavin Newsom, who has proposed an investment of $25 million for services to unaccompanied youth and children in support of the safety and well-being of families.  

The WES Mariam Assefa Fund’s partnership with CA DFF is supporting narrative change work, power-building strategies for migrant and refugee-led organizations, and address housing justice issues for immigrants and refugees. This collaboration serves migrants of color in order to engage in entrepreneurship, enter education systems, and bolster their participation in the workforce. In addition, this partnership is addressing the systemic barriers which migrants face when navigating the legal system, such as providing logistical support for migrants to obtain work authorization permits.

 Grant – General Operating Support

The Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience (CCNDR) was launched in March 2022 with a vision of a digitally enabled non-profit sector where Canada’s diverse non-profits use data and tech to advance their mission and multiply their impact.

With this grant, the Fund will be joining other funders that have already committed to supporting CCNDR’s operations for the next three years. More specifically, the  Fund’s grant will be allocated for staffing and other costs associated with the Digital Leadership for Gender Justice initiative that CCNDR will be launching in 2023. For this initiative, CCNDR will establish a research and development consortium to co-design a program focused on Canadian organizations serving immigrant and refugee women. The initiative will explore ways to leverage opportunities presented by virtual service delivery, digital technologies, and data as well as how to adopt new technologies and use data in a safe, secure, and responsible way.

Impact Investment

Cell-Ed is an early-stage mobile-first education technology company that helps workers attain essential life and job skills more effectively. Founded in 2014 by Jessica Rothenberg-Aalami, Cell-Ed’s platform supports English language learning, sector-specific training, and the digital literacy needs of immigrant workers. Tens of thousands of adults currently use Cell-Ed’s platform, courses, and content to experience 84 percent faster skills gains. Learners access Cell-Ed through partner organizations that include education providers and employers in the United States and worldwide. 

Since its inception, Cell-Ed has been an innovator in providing access to educational content to individuals in low-wage jobs. Originally created to serve Latinx immigrant women in California, Cell-Ed has developed a tool whose robust content enables learners to listen to lessons on a flip phone, from anywhere, at any time. Ninety percent of Cell-Ed’s current users are Black or Latinx, and the vast majority are also first- or second-generation immigrants. The opportunity gap experienced by workers with low literacy or low educational attainment in low-wage jobs is daunting. The Fund’s investment will enable Cell-Ed to expand the reach of its core mobile skill-building product, invest in its people, and launch new products and forge new partnerships that work to bridge the opportunity gap and position Cell-Ed learners to advance in high-growth sectors, such as health care. 

Grant

The Centre for Civic Religious Literacy (CCRL) is a non-profit that aims to foster an understanding about religious, spiritual, and non-religious people so that individuals can live and work better together. CCRL is partnering with Temiskaming Shores & Area Chamber of Commerce (TSACC), the Rural Development Network (RDN) and Religious Freedom and Business Foundation (RFBF) for this project.  

Temiskaming Shores & Area is a small, 30,000 resident, highly homogenous region in Ontario with a strong desire to welcome and recruit immigrants and refugees but an inability to attract and retain them successfully. To create a welcoming and inclusive space that entices recruitment and promotes retention of immigrants, the four partners are piloting a faith-based employee resource group (ERG) that will showcase the needs of local immigrant and refugee populations and enable employees to connect with others with similar or different faiths or ethnical and cultural identities.

Grant – Project Support

The Center for Family Life (CFL) is a neighborhood-based family and social services organization with deep roots in Sunset Park, a community in Brooklyn, N.Y. CFL’s Cooperative Development Program has been incubating immigrant-led worker cooperatives since 2006. For the past four years, CFL has been developing Brightly®, a franchise of worker-owned, women-run, community-led cooperatives that offer eco-friendly residential and commercial cleaning services. 

With this grant, The Brightly cooperative franchise system plans to expand beyond New York and into new markets, starting with Philadelphia. Worker-owners in cooperatives supported by CFL have been primarily first-generation immigrant, Spanish-speaking (76 percent) women (83 percent) with high school education or less (73 percent) who have children (72 percent). The Brightly cooperative model enables immigrant women to access safe, non-exploitative work; it improves their earnings and supports longer-term wealth building for worker-owners and their families. 

Grant

A leader in California with agricultural land-based training programs for youth and adults, the Center for Land-Based Learning’s (CLBL) mission is to encourage and support a new generation of farmers. CLBL provides support for aspiring new and beginning farmers through a seven-month beginning farmer training program, a 4-year farm incubator program, and a farm manager apprenticeship program. 

With this grant, the Center for Land-Based Learning is providing upskilling and training opportunities for farmworkers to ladder up into new roles as farm managers and supervisors, roles with higher wages and the ability to influence the conditions for farmworkers on a job site. The dangerous working conditions and limited economic mobility facing California’s more than 400,000 farmworkers are well documented, and while the workers are a vital part of the food system, they stand to benefit little from it, despite their roles as essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to creating new opportunities for workers, CLBL is engaging with employers to identify the skills they seek in farm managers which shapes the design of the class sessions and on-the-job training. 

Grant – General Operating Support  

Center for Southeast Asians (CSEA) is a non-profit organization rooted in the community. It was founded in 1987 to serve those four Southeast Asian (SEA) communities: Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese. These communities were established in Rhode Island and in other states in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, when refugees fled the violence and genocide in Southeast Asia that were unleashed by the Vietnam War. CSEA’s core mission is to promote the prosperity, heritage, and leadership of Southeast Asians in Rhode Island. Throughout the years, the organization has expanded its mission to serve other ethnic minority communities, including a sizable Latino community and new refugees from Bhutan, Liberia, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Syria. 

With this grant, CSEA seeks to support Southeast Asian Americans who have limited access to well-paying jobs and lack English literacy skills. To address these issues, CSEA will expand its current adult literacy and employment effort, which provides various programs, including a three-part adult literacy program, a financial literacy coaching and education program, and professional development training in nursing, carpentry, pipe fitting, welding, and HVAC. Additionally, CSEA will support immigrants who are small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs, through business coaching, loans, and networking opportunities.

Grant – Project Support

Centreville Immigration Forum was founded to address the needs of low-income immigrants, especially the growing number of day laborers seeking work in informal gathering spots. Centreville Immigration Forum’s mission is to offer sustainable programs that provide immigrants in need with the means to improve their lives and become more integrated into the community; improve communication and cooperation among immigrant-serving groups; and raise community awareness of the inherent strength in diversity. 

With support from the WES Mariam Assefa Fund, Centreville Immigration Forum’s new initiative is focused on supporting Ixil women day laborers in order to address the lack of gender and culturally specific supports at day labor centers for these workers. The Mujeres: Triangulo Ixil program provides leadership opportunities and development for these workers. It also offers opportunities to learn about approaches that may translate to other efforts to empower women immigrant workers more broadly as well as other Indigenous immigrant communities. 

Grant

The Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration and Integration, launched by the Canadian Government at Ryerson University, aims to create innovative and accessible knowledge surrounding the connections between migration and post-migration processes, forced and voluntary mobility, internal and international migration, and the role of countries of origin and transit, including non-state stakeholders at local, national, and international levels. They disseminate their research through scheduled events enabling community and key stakeholders to access it.   

This project is addressing the issues temporary migrant workers encounter in the agricultural sector. These workers account for half of Canada’s paid agricultural workforce and are often employed in conditions where discrimination, exploitation, and abuse are common. CERC in Migration’s “Fair Farm Work” project seeks to harness consumer power to drive change for agricultural workers by creating a Fair Work labelling scheme that outlines a set of guidelines that producers, suppliers, and distributors must meet to be certified. The project will entail learning from other fair work certification initiatives, especially in Europe and the U.S., analyzing current gaps in Ontario legislation regarding the regulation of farm work, building a fair work coalition of farmers, employer and worker associations, supermarkets and distributors, and local and regional authorities. 

Grant – Project Support  

Code the Dream offers free intensive training in software development to people from diverse low-income backgrounds. The ultimate goal of Code the Dream is to create a unique win-win that allows coders in the program to acquire real experience building apps that make the world a little bit better, and then use that experience to launch new careers that offer greater opportunity to themselves, their families, and their communities. 

With this grant, Code the Dream is expanding and scaling its model beyond the 12 states where it currently works and building out additional physical hubs in Atlanta and Chicago. Following its successful rapid shift to remote instruction last spring, Code the Dream is also expanding its remote programming. With increased attention on skills-based recruitment and hiring to provide better opportunities to workers who have lower levels of formal education, Code the Dream’s work can help encourage employers to hire, invest in, and support immigrant and refugee workers. 

Impact Investment 

Common Future equips local economy leaders, funders, investors, and policymakers with the relationships, knowledge, and resources they need to build economically empowered communities through equitable business and economic development.  

WES and Common Future have partnered on Action Lab: Participatory Investing to demonstrate how to shift power and decision-making to communities. The WES-Common Future Action Lab on Participatory Investing will bring together a dozen funders for 12 months of peer learning and action. Funders will learn about, experiment with, and co-create new models and strategies for participatory investing within their own institutions and through a collaborative fund. The other funders are California Wellness Foundation, Alliance Healthcare Foundation, Footprint Foundation, Hyams Foundation, Fels Foundation, and Cienega Capital/Globetrotter Foundation. 

Impact Investment

Community Credit Lab (CCL) is a nonprofit with a mission to provide lending programs for communities that are often excluded from traditional financing, including immigrants and BIPOC entrepreneurs. CCL works to navigate the traditional credit-based practices and facilitate equitable, community-led investment strategies and mitigate discrimination faced in the financial system. Since its inception in 2019, CCL has facilitated 5 lending programs with 10 lending partners.  

A recoverable grant from the Fund will support CCL’s pilot lending programs for immigrants, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ communities to access consumer and commercial loans. The programs will enable systemic change by analyzing the root causes of inequality in financial systems, improve access to credit using non-traditional qualification criteria, and create relationship-based lending through a trust-based and participatory model.   

Grant – General Operating Support

Established to fill an existing service gap for refugee and immigrant communities in Northeast Wisconsin, Community Services Agency Inc. (COMSA) strives to create an environment that not only welcomes immigrants and refugees but also provides services that enable them to become self-sufficient. COMSA seeks to address the special needs and challenges affecting refugees and immigrants daily through after school programs, citizenship classes, youth leadership mentorship, English classes, and summer school programs. 

COMSA estimates that as many as 1,200 individuals from Afghanistan have recently resettled in Brown County through formal resettlement and informal migration channels, with resettlement agencies struggling to serve so many evacuees at once. With this grant, COMSA will be able to support and advocate for Afghan new arrivals in Brown County as they enter employment opportunities, creating an environment where resettled refugees feel understood and welcomed and one where they can thrive. COMSA will work to provide additional services including transportation and English language proficiency for school-aged children, mental health support, and culturally responsive childcare. 

Grant – Project Support

The Community Sponsorship Hub Catalyst Fund was established in 2019 to help organizations across the United States develop, implement, and enhance community sponsorship programs. The Community Sponsorship Hub pairs refugees and other forcibly displaced populations with community connections such as local clubs, businesses, university communities, and faith groups.  

Support from the WES Mariam Assefa Fund and other funders is piloting new models for refugee resettlement in order to improve outcomes for individuals and expand the capacity and resilience of the field at the local and national levels. The Community Sponsorship Hub aims to build support for refugees through a community sponsorship model, facilitate meaningful peer learning, and provide alternatives to traditional resettlement models. This work aspires to center refugee voices into the grantmaking process and support their economic mobility. 

Impact Investment  

The Dearfield Fund for Black Wealth is a new place-based investment fund that seeks to reduce the racial wealth gap in Denver, Colorado, by accelerating local Black homeownership. Launched by Gary Community Ventures in partnership with Denver’s Black community, the Dearfield Fund helps Black and African American first-time home buyers obtain access to no-interest down payment assistance to put toward the purchase of a new home as a means of building generational wealth. Additionally, the Dearfield Fund offers wealth-building resources to these homeowners through a robust wraparound program that provides pre-purchase, post-purchase, and wealth advisory services. The Dearfield Fund expects to support 500 Black homeowners, raising median wealth by $100,000 and resulting in $50 million of cumulative wealth creation. 

With support from the WES Mariam Assefa Fund, the Dearfield Fund aims to revitalize historically Black neighborhoods. At least 60 percent of the investment will assist home buyers in six high-impact census tracts where there is strong potential to slow gentrification and build regional Black wealth. This grant will help to bolster the Dearfield Fund’s ability to demonstrate the impact and viability of a place-based investment approach focused on homeownership.  

Project Support 

Ryerson University has a unique mandate to meet societal needs through high-quality, professional, and career-related programs as well as scholarly, research, and creative activities. Ryerson is student-focused, providing an emphasis on experiential learning, creativity, entrepreneurship, adult learning, and alternative pathways for marginalized populations.  

Established in 1999, the Ted Rogers School of Management’s Diversity Institute conducts and coordinates multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder research to address the needs of diverse Canadians, the changing nature of skills and competencies, and the policies, processes, and tools that advance economic inclusion and success.   

 In recent research, Diversity Institute finds that racialized newcomer youth often encounter systemic challenges, including barriers to accessing post-secondary education, barriers to job placements and training programs, and barriers to securing employment. With support from the Fund, Diversity Institute will implement a program to provide language skills, digital skills training, counselling, and wraparound services for racialized newcomer youth, particularly Afghan refugees. The program will serve approximately 100 racialized newcomer young people in the Greater Toronto Area, Halifax, and Calgary.  

Grant – Project Support

Echoing Green is a nonprofit organization that operates at the intersection of social justice and social innovation globally. Echoing Green has invested millions in seed funding for emerging social enterprises and works towards creating an expansive global network for these leaders.  

The WES Mariam Assefa Fund and Echoing Green are partnering to launch the Racial Equity and Immigrant Justice Initiative, which supports social innovators from immigrant, refugee, and BIPOC communities. This partnership aims to address systemic barriers that exclude immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs from participating in social enterprise. For example, Black immigrants and refugees in the U.S. who come from the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa make up ~15% of all immigrants and have a higher probability of racial discrimination. This is because their racial identity clusters them with the prejudices that Black or African Americans have generationally experienced. Echoing Green is guided by an intersectional approach and emphasizes shifting power to the people most impacted by the outcomes of their enterprise.

Grant – Project Support 

The EdTech Center @ World Education leverages technology to increase the reach and impact of education and workforce initiatives. As a leader in education technology, the EdTech Center works to build equitable and inclusive digital learning ecosystems that enable everyone to thrive and be informed, active citizens in the new digital world. Housed at World Education in Boston, the EdTech Center works with partners to accelerate learning, digital literacy, college and career readiness, and economic mobility for all.  

The EdTech Center’s Equity in mLearning initiative is developing a new, inclusive, and accessible mobile learning and career support platform for immigrant-serving workforce organizations and workers. Over the next two years, the team is developing and piloting the open source platform in close collaboration with these organizations. As remote learning and training becomes more integrated in our new normal, the Equity in mLearning initiative responds to needs of the field and aims at advancing solutions that can address the digital divide experienced by immigrants and refugees and the organizations that serve them. 

Impact Investment

Employment Technology Fund (ETF) at JFFLabs partners with diverse entrepreneurs building early-stage future of work and employment technology solutions that help adults with low to middle incomes find, secure, and prepare for jobs that lead to economic advancement.  

With this investment, ETF can bolster their ability to demonstrate the impact of their approach, invest in proximate leaders, advance economic mobility outcomes for our target population, and support more equitable and inclusive systems. The Fund’s investment is supporting an additional 30-40 early-stage ideas driving meaningful impact for immigrants, refugees, and communities of color. 

Grant – Project Support

Encuentro’s mission is to transform New Mexico into a thriving community for all its residents by engaging Latinx immigrant families in educational and career development opportunities that impart skills which enable work toward economic and social justice. 

With this grant, Encuentro is growing its Home Health Aide program, an innovative and multiple-sector collaborative approach which addresses the economic integration barriers that Latinx immigrants encounter in New Mexico’s home health industry. Encuentro’s approach is engaging immigrant workers, particularly Latinx women, to create dignified and stable jobs for themselves, while transforming economic systems that are inherently stacked against immigrants, people of color, and women. Encuentro’s worker-centered approach provides an important alternative to the profit-centered industry model, and supports low-income caregivers to develop critical skills, improve earnings, and shape policy, while also improving access to higher quality care for the elderly community. 

Grant – General Operating Support

The Ethnocultural Council of Manitoba (ECCM) is a shared space where diverse ethnic communities come together to provide an empowering platform and collective voice with equal representation for immigrants, refugees and visible minorities working to make Manitoba a welcoming and inclusive province. 

With this funding, ECCM is supporting access to COVID-19 information and challenges misinformation and hesitancy in ethnocultural communities in Winnipeg. They are also working to increase access to the COVID-19 vaccine to isolated BIPOC and newcomer communities who face language barriers. The funding will enable ECCM to create oral storytelling videos in numerous languages to showcase BIPOC women, youth and seniors.

Project Support  

Four Freedoms Fund (FFF) is a national funder collaborative that strengthens the capacity of the immigrant justice movement to ensure that all immigrants, regardless of immigration status, have dignity, power to shape change, and agency to determine the quality of their lives, communities, and future. Through sustained grantmaking, ongoing technical assistance to grantees, and funder education and coordination, FFF invests in the long-term growth of the immigrant justice movement and its ability to thrive, achieve bold, transformational reforms, and win lasting justice. Since FFF’s founding in 2003, it has infused the immigrant justice field with more than US$190 million. 

A new grant from the WES Mariam Assefa Fund will support FFF’s new program initiative called the Black Migrant Power Fund. This initiative was founded in response to horrifying images of Border Patrol officers attacking Haitian migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in September 2021. The Black Migrant Power Fund is a community-led fund that will move immediate, no-strings funding to Black-led, grassroots organizations addressing the urgent needs of Black migrant communities and building power with and for Black migrants in the U.S. In collaboration with 13 Black migrant-led organizations, Black Migrant Power Fund is geared toward supporting Black, LGBTQI+, undocumented, young, and formerly incarcerated individuals.  

Project Support  

Future of Good is a digital publication and learning resource. Its mission is to enrich Canada’s changemakers with smart coverage of the social impact world. Future of Good’s 2,500-plus subscribers are impact-oriented professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs from across the country. Readers gain insights, analysis, and commentary so they can stay current, stay knowledgeable, and make brave transitions into a new era of impact. 

A new grant from the Fund will support Future of Good’s Inclusion and Anti-Racism editorial fellowship. Under the auspices of a 12-month digital content residency, the fellow will work with the Future of Good Editorial team, supported by WES. The fellow will cover a range of perspectives, stories, and angles that offer insights and analytical takes on the lived experience of the cascading and intersectional effects of systemic racism in Canada. In a time when colonial, racist, and exclusionary approaches to workforce growth have disproportionately affected racialized women, youth, newcomer communities, and Indigenous peoples, there is a need for journalism to call attention to these issues. Future of Good’s editorial fellow centres the voices and lived experience of Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of colour through this journalistic work.  

Grant

Garment Worker Center (GWC) is a worker rights organization leading an anti-sweatshop movement to improve conditions for tens of thousands of Los Angeles garment workers. Through direct organizing, GWC develops leaders who demand enforcement of strong labor laws and accountability from factory owners, manufacturers, and fashion brands.

The WES Mariam Assefa Fund is supporting GWC’s two-year campaign for targeted, local investment for post-pandemic recovery in the garment industry that promotes a regenerative economy in which workers, the environment and business can thrive. GWC’s work puts forth a compelling vision for the advancement of immigrant women working in an industry that historically has unfair labor practices. The initiative is a collaboration between ethical fashion brands, manufacturers, organizations and workers, to advocate for policy that supports post-pandemic economic recovery in the California garment industry, including workforce development, small business subsidies to incentivize labor compliance, seed grants for innovative production models, zoning protections for the Los Angeles garment district, worker-driven auditing programs, and expanded local procurement.

Grant

United Way of Southern Maine serves as the backbone organization for the Greater Portland Workforce Initiative (GWPI), a collective impact project of 21 stakeholders, including representatives from employers, education/training providers, funders, federal, state, and local government, non-profit organizations, and community and economic development organizations. GWPI’s goal is to help eliminate barriers to entering or remaining in the workforce for five target populations who face significant obstacles to steady and sustainable employment, including immigrants and refugees.  

With this grant, GPWI is developing a system for employers to become better equipped and more confident in hiring, promoting, and retaining more immigrants and refugees, including internationally trained individuals working in roles not commensurate with their professional background and experience. The initiative will serve a growing immigrant community in southern Maine, in addition to a wide range of employers. The proposal adopts a multi-faceted approach to bridging the gap between internationally trained job seekers and employers, addressing needs through a systemic lens to target root causes and strategies to achieve immediate programmatic benefits. 

Grant

Groundswell School provides alternative education that prioritizes students’ lived experiences, challenges toxic systems, and helps to build collective power to change the status quo. Groundswell students are social entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, community organizers, and non-profit leaders with varied intersectional backgrounds who are systematically underrepresented in leadership and entrepreneurship. Since 2013, Groundswell has served over 250 individuals with their social entrepreneurship and self-employment programs, helping to create over 75 jobs.  

This grant is supporting the design and launch of a train-the-trainer version of Groundswell’s Leadership for Social Change course, an inclusive, trauma-informed, anti-oppressive, and intersectionality-feminist approach to leadership and career development training. The 6-month program will provide an adaptive approach for community leaders and organizers who serve immigrant women through their jobs or ventures to learn to facilitate person-centered, strengths-based leadership and livelihood development. Trainees will receive support to pilot and test the Groundswell approach within their communities and will be provided wraparound services during the program. 

Grant – General Operating Support

The Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion (HCCI) was formed in 2006 as a result of the work undertaken through the Strengthening Hamilton Community’s Initiative, which was formed as a response to the burning of Hamilton’s Hindu Samaj Temple in 2001, following the 9/11, terrorist attacks in the USA. HCCI’s short-term objective was to deal with the distress in the community caused by the burning of the Temple and then evolve as a civic resource center to create an inclusive and welcoming city through respecting diversity, practicing equity, and speaking out against discrimination.  

With this funding, HCCI is working with health experts and community organizations to ensure BIPOC and newcomer communities have access to COVID-19 vaccines and COVID-19 related information. The organization hired a COVID coordinator to support their COVID-19 vaccine clinic, which has vaccinated thousands of Hamilton residents. They host public town halls, creating informational COVID-19 videos in numerous languages for ethnocultural organizations.

Project Support

Her Migrant Hub (HMH) is a community-driven group focusing on increasing access to and utilization of health care and mental health services for women seeking asylum in New York City. HMH works from a trauma-informed perspective to support women seeking asylum who are often invisible in their new communities because of language barriers, cultural differences, and stigma due to legal status.

With this grant, HMH will bolster its Creating Sanctuary initiative, which aims to increase awareness of and access to rights, resources, and services for people just arriving in New York City who have experienced forced migration. Creating Sanctuary also seeks to address the overstretched capacity of the city’s shelter system resulting from a sharp increase in refugees. In addition, HMH plans to design and develop several tools that will create a welcoming atmosphere for newcomers, including animated short guides and events.

GOS

Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative (I-ARC) is a coalition of legal advocates that works to increase access to justice and counsel for all immigrants in the state of New York. Through its network, I-ARC fosters a collaborative environment among legal advocates in the area, which facilitates knowledge sharing to better support immigrant communities, quick and collective responses to challenges as they arise, and a united front to challenge anti-immigrant policies and confront inequalities faced by immigrant communities in the legal system.

Our funding is supporting I-ARC’s work addressing the recent influx of more than 20,000 migrants from South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and other places, which has caused a strain on already overtaxed New York organizations. I-ARC is bolstering its friend of the court program, through which legal practitioners ensure that unrepresented immigrants understand the proceedings involving them, advise the court of information helpful to respondents’ cases, and serve as a liaison between the court and the respondent. The program will support asylum seekers by having a lawyer or properly supervised law student meet with each respondent and then speak on that person’s behalf at the hearing.

Grant – General Operating Support

Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative (I-ARC) is a coalition of legal advocates that works to increase access to justice and counsel for all immigrants in New York. I-ARC was born out of the “Muslim Ban” of 2017 when hundreds of New York state lawyers came to JFK Airport in an effort to help those affected by the new policy. A few weeks later, the lawyers met to discuss their experiences since they first met and brainstorm creative solutions for the future. This network soon became I-ARC. Through their network, I-ARC fosters a collaborative environment among legal advocates in the area, which allows for knowledge sharing to better support immigrant communities, quick and collective responses to challenges as they arise, and a united front as they challenge anti-immigrant policies and confront inequalities faced by immigrant communities in the legal system. 

With the Fund’s support, I-ARC will hire an attorney experienced in both immigration systems whose role will be to build relationships and foster this cross-border collaborative network. Created to assess and communicate existing and emerging migration-related issues occurring alongside the U.S-Canada border, this network will facilitate the creation of innovative solutions that provide an effective and collaborative approach to lawful mitigation while preserving border security and public safety. This network will be developed in conjunction with several key partners both in the U.S. and Canada, including I-ARC members currently working on the U.S. northern border, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, the litigation team working on the challenge to the Safe Third Country Agreement before Canada’s Supreme Court, human rights organizations working in the U.S. and Canada, and others who will be included as the network grows. 

Grant – Project Support

Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia (ISANS) is the largest immigrant-serving agency in Atlantic Canada. ISANS works with newcomers to help them build a future in Canada and provides a wide range of services, including pre-arrival programs, professional programs for internationally trained workers, refugee settlement assistance, family counselling, and work-integrated English language programming.

ISANS is developing a three-phase bridging program for internationally educated early childhood educators and primary school teachers. This training will support participants obtaining the certification required to access jobs or move up into higher-earning positions in the sector. Internationally educated professionals, regardless of their field, remain underemployed in Canada. The work of ISANS is helping immigrants assess their skills on the job and close skills gaps that could otherwise block their path to certification and contribute to immigrant underemployment. 

Grant

The Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) is a Quebec-based organization that defends the rights of immigrants in their workplaces and fights for dignity, respect, and justice. It was founded in 2000 by a small group of Filipino-Canadian union organizers along with their academic and activist allies. The organizers saw that unions were not meeting all the needs of workers. The IWC emerged to address the needs and concerns of workers. 

With this grant, IWC is expanding its ongoing advocacy, capacity-building, and policy change work. They are building workers’ collective leadership to amplify their voices in the public sphere supporting labour rights ambassadors. IWC is also working to ensure that workers can defend their rights in the workplace by providing workshops on labour standards, health and safety and immigration law. IWC’s approach is to bring these groups of workers with various situations into a council which will institutionalize the work of ambassadors to change the status quo. IWC will also continue advocating better working conditions for workers (e.g., to raise the minimum wage to $18) and providing legal advice and support to workers.   

Grant – Project Support

Inclusive Action for the City addresses the root causes of poverty by merging good urban policy with sound economic development initiatives that reduce barriers, increase opportunity, strengthen local economies, and empower low-income residents and entrepreneurs. Inclusive Action partners with communities to prototype innovative, scalable solutions that can contribute to systems change. 

Inspired by Inclusive Action’s advocacy work alongside street vendors, their Semi’a Fund loan is designed to support entrepreneurs, many of whom are immigrants, who cannot secure capital from traditional lenders yet need it to expand or formalize their business. By scaling this program, Inclusive Action envisions opportunities to increase direct lending, advise partners who are developing their own initiatives, and build capacity within other community-based programs. Flexible lending and financial support are particularly important amid the economic slowdown, which has affected many immigrant entrepreneurs. 

Grant – Project Support  

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a global non-profit that responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. In the United States, the IRC provides opportunities for refugees, asylees, victims of human trafficking, survivors of torture, and other immigrants to thrive. Working with government bodies, civil society actors, and local volunteers, the IRC helps these people translate their past experiences into assets and skills that are valuable to their new communities. 

The IRC is working in four cities to strengthen local workforce systems and support successful career pathways for immigrant and refugee workers. In four distinct economies—Seattle; San Diego; Boise, Idaho; and Atlanta—the IRC will illuminate how local policies and decisions affect the economic outcomes of refugees and immigrants. This project seeks to help identify career paths that enable these workers to learn industry-specific skills in their communities based on local economic needs.   

Impact Investment 

Isempower is a mission-driven technology platform that supports international students by matching them with relevant jobs and offering job search skill-building and mentorship opportunities. Isempower is enabling higher education institutions to attract and support the growing population of international students at scale while helping employers hire educated entry-level candidates.

The investment will support Isempower’s goal of advancing its technology platform, building out a product that could help hundreds of thousands of international students critical skills, secure meaningful employment, and navigate the path to economic and social inclusion. At this early stage, WES would be Isempower’s first institutional investor, providing an important signal to the market and potentially attracting additional institutional capital.

Grant – General Operating Support

The Jane and Finch Centre is a multi-service, community-based organization focusing on poverty reduction through resident engagement, capacity building and anti-oppression. They have a long history of innovation and response to community needs and priorities. For over 44 years, the organization has strategically built the health and well-being of Jane and Finch in collaboration with residents, community leaders, community groups, organizations and partners from within the local community and beyond. 

With this funding, Jane and Finch is implementing the Youth Vaccine Outreach Animator, which will create COVID-19 vaccine interventions on social media and in-person and provide vaccine referrals to youth (ages 12 – 21) living in Jane-Finch and Black Creek community. 

Grant

A nonprofit, nonsectarian organization, Jewish Vocational Service’s (JVS) mission is to empower individuals from diverse communities to find employment and build careers, while partnering from employers to hire, develop, and retain productive workforces.  

With this grant, JVS is expanding their piloted Job Quality Benchmarking Index, a software product that identifies and compares employers with one another on specific, entry-level roles based on five pillars of job quality identified by a job seeker pool through surveys and focus groups. Through the index, JVS seeks to provide comparable, quantifiable data to employers to help them improve their jobs, while using the data obtained to assist job seekers in finding the positions that best fit their needs and goals. JVS is partnering with local organizations in expanding its services through licensing the index, which helps to build the capacity of organizations in other localities partnering with employers and serving job-seekers.

Grant

Kinbrace Community Society (Kinbrace) aspires to grow transformative communities where refugee claimants flourish through housing security, protection, legal support, and job opportunities, and by supporting wellbeing and cultivating belonging. For parts of this project, Kinbrace is partnering with Launchpad, an organization that supports new Canadians, permanent residents, convention refugees and refugee claimants recertify and reskill or upskill to work in the same field as they did in their country of origin.  

This initiative aims to address three key barriers faced by refugee claimants when trying to achieve financial mobility in Canada: discriminatory preconceived notions, lack of targeted opportunities, and a need for recertifying, reskilling, or upskilling to gain meaningful employment. Kinbrace is convening refugee claimant employment roundtables to help break down employment barriers, as well as creating a centralized repository of employment, volunteering, networking, and educational opportunities for refugee claimants. Kinbrace is also launching a campaign to promote the employment successes of refugee claimants, both from the refugee claimant’s perspective and the employer’s perspective.

Grant – Project Support  

MLOV’s mission is to support immigrants in Washington, D.C., who do not speak English as a primary language. MLOV’s goal is to foster leadership and provide tools that allow greater civic participation so these immigrants can be a part of designing and developing strategies and resources that improve their lives. 

With this grant, the early childcare Birth to Three (B3) campaign will support economic mobility for single mothers and families by re-envisioning the childcare sector within immigrant and refugee communities in Washington, D.C. In addition to establishing childcare “pods” to provide a range of supports and fostering grassroots organizing, the B3 program is working key partners, such as American University’s Community and Economic Development Law Clinic, to establish and run a childcare cooperative. At the heart of MLOV’s work of reimagining childcare programs for immigrant families is its plan to develop a strong network of future advocates with new skill sets to mobilize for change.   

Impact Investment

Founded in 2020, MICC Financial (“MICC”) is a financial technology startup that has built a platform to help groups of people and individuals save money, access capital, and build credit. The company’s platform helps their clients save as a group and improve their financial well-being, enabling them to solve financial challenges and achieve their goals. Founded by immigrants, MICC has a target segment focus on supporting newcomers and immigrants without credit history.  

With support from the Fund, MICC would bolster their ability to demonstrate the impact of their approach, build its product, advance financial health outcomes for their target population, and support more equitable and inclusive systems. Access to credit is an asset for individuals to pursue economic opportunities and enhance financial security. However, credit invisibility is a significant problem for Canadians, with 35.3% of the population being credit invisible. Credit invisibility is caused largely by structural issues within Canada’s data markets. To bridge this information gap in the credit system and unlock opportunity, MICC is digitizing the informal rotational savings and credit association model to allow users to establish payment history with their own funds, with no interest fees. 

 Grant – General Operating Support

The Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC) is a membership-based, migrant-led organization that supports migrants across Canada in accessing basic rights and services. MWAC supports the formation of migrant worker peer support groups in their workplaces, communities, and schools, both in person and online. In December 2018, MWAC founded the Migrant Rights Network (MRN), the most impactful organization for systems change regarding migrant issues in Canada, allowing over 40 migrant-led organizations across the country to share updates, strategies, and expertise with each other.

With this general operating support grant, MWAC will continue its much-needed and impactful work supporting worker organizing, advocacy of policy and systems change, and ensuring that migrants have access to rights and services, as well as its coordination of provincial and nationwide migrant-led organizations through the Migrant Rights Network. Among the key focus areas for MWAC in the next two years are increasing its number of members and trained organizers, developing a single hotline for all migrant workers and a comprehensive cross-country referral system, and expanding the Migrant Rights Network.

Project Support 

Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Society’s mission is to improve the lives of Indigenous peoples living in urban environments through social and cultural programming. This mission is achieved by promoting the educational, cultural, and economic advancement of Indigenous people, assisting in locating shelter for Indigenous peoples in the Halifax/Dartmouth regional area, and encouraging the active participation of Indigenous people in all aspects of society.  

With a new grant from the Fund, Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Society will implement its program Participatory Canada to support community resilience. Participatory Canada will address critical post-pandemic recovery challenges of economic, social, and climatic dimensions, all of which need to be tackled through improved social infrastructures that reduce polarization and strengthen social bonds. This initiative is aimed at serving newcomers to Canada as well as immigrant and refugee communities. Its unique approach creates conditions for neighbours to work better together in times of crisis and disaster and helps embed reconciliation, equity, and capability building into everyday community life.

Grant – Project Support

Mission Asset Fund (MAF) believes that the best solutions are found in the strengths of historically marginalized communities. MAF’s programs and services meet the complex needs of low-income communities through a three-pronged approach: recognizing the resilience and wisdom in communities, building programs that transform everyday financial practices into savings and credit building opportunities, and scaling programs nationwide by leveraging user-centered design principles and technology. 

This grant supports MAF’s Lending Circles, which bring people together to form zero-interest, small dollar loans. MAF acts as a loan servicer—ensuring that everyone in the circle receives a loan—and reports each borrower’s payments to the three major U.S. credit bureaus. For millions of immigrant families in the U.S., the tools needed to achieve financial security are out of reach. MAF helps communities meet immediate financial assistance needs and provides training to secure the financial future of individuals within the community.

Impact Investment  

Mission Driven Finance (MDF) is a certified B Corporation and impact investing firm committed to closing financial and opportunity gaps. MDF Capital Partners (MDFCP) is MDF’s first fund, structured as a national private credit portfolio and created with expert community partners across the U.S. The fund uses an intentional approach to accelerate inclusive and equitable access to capital, reducing the time to impact for community-based investment initiatives and promoting greater economic opportunity for small businesses. 

This new grant from the WES Mariam Assefa Fund will bolster MDF’s ability to demonstrate the impact and viability of its approach and crowd in additional institutional investment. The grant will support MDF’S aim of providing flexible financing and delivering the right capital at the right time, including non-dilutive loans, revenue-based financing, revolving facilities, Islamic finance, and special purpose vehicles. MDFCP will prioritize organizations owned or led by people from historically marginalized groups such as immigrants, refugees, Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color, or that directly benefit people from these groups. It will target impact-driven initiatives that advance economic opportunity but face capital gaps. MDFCP will focus on “missing middle” transactions of amounts between $150,000 and $1.5 million. 

Grant

MOSAIC is one of the largest settlement organizations in Canada, serving immigrant, refugee, and other communities since 1976. They provide a broad range of services including settlement assistance, English language training, employment programs, interpretation and translation, and counselling services. The Alliance for Doctors Denied by Degree is hosted by MOSAIC and works in partnership with the Canadian on Paper Society for Immigrant Physicians Equality (COPSIPE), the Association of International Medical Graduates of Alberta (AIMGA), the Society of Canadians Studying Medicine Abroad (SOCASMA) SFU Refugee Livelihood Lab, and the Foundation of International Medical Graduates. These partners will be actively involved in this project.  

This project is challenging the systemic discrimination faced by immigrant and refugee physicians who are citizens and permanent residents of Canada. MOSAIC will collect and analyze disaggregated data from the key medical and government bodies that International Medical Graduates (IMGs) interact with for their licensure and residencies. The project will also entail interviewing IMGs to collect demographic and quantitative data to compare the data collected from the data sources and identify any missing data. The data collected will help develop equity-focused interventions to help reduce existing disparities for IMGs.

Project support  

The National Association of System Heads (NASH) serves as a forum for the exchange of views and information among its members and leverages its network to advance innovation in public higher education. Its cross-system collaboration has focused on increasing student access and success in college, especially that of low-income students and students of color. NASH represents 65 state systems and 75 percent of all U.S. public post-secondary students.  

This grant from the WES Mariam Assefa Fund will aid NASH’s efforts to raise awareness of the leadership role played by public systems of higher education in refugee resettlement, provide additional support to current and future refugee student and refugee family programs, and in the future help procure funds from the federal, state, and private sectors. NASH is committed to helping a growing number of its member institutions in their efforts to become reliable sources of refugee resettlement support. With this grant from the Fund, NASH will continue to expand educational access and bring new opportunities for private sponsorship of refugees and their families at both the state and national levels.   

Grant

The National Fund for Workforce Solutions’ mission is to collaborate with workers, employers, and communities to advance a skilled workforce, promote good jobs, and invest in equitable outcomes. Asa national network of almost 30 communities, the National Fund takes a demand-driven, evidence-based approach to workforce development. Ultimately, they envision an equitable future where workers, employers, and communities are thriving and prosperous.   

The Fund is supporting the Healthcare Immigrant Workforce Project, which leverages the expertise and peer-learning model of CareerSTAT, a national network of over 400 healthcare employers and partners, to share workforce development innovations, best practices, and outcome-based initiatives to support immigrant frontline healthcare workers to build skills, advance careers and achieve family-sustaining wages. The project will identify and uplift employer expertise within the network, develop a strategy to facilitate peer-learning, add and promote immigrant-specific resources, and implement a practice change intervention to build the skills and careers of immigrant frontline workers.

Project Support  

New Mexico Dream Team (NMDT) is an Albuquerque-based, statewide youth-led network committed to empowering multigenerational, undocumented, LGBTQ+, and mixed-status families toward liberation. NMDT trains young leaders in intersectional community and civic engagement, enabling young people to channel their individual and collective power and use it to advance racial, gender-related, and economic justice and create more equitable conditions for all our communities to thrive. The organization has 27 active student chapters on campuses across the state and 12,547 members, with a digital reach of 1.8 million.   

Core to NMDT’s theory of change is that in developing young leaders, it is creating a new narrative: where marginalization is unacceptable, safe and accepting environments are the norm, and all are able to access education and economic opportunities regardless of documentation status or how they identify. With support from the Fund, NMDT will implement the Puentes No Barreras (Bridges Not Barriers) program. This initiative will create and expand pathways of opportunity for immigrant and undocumented workers, with a unique curriculum and training developed with and for employers, educational institutions, and immigrant students and job seekers, establishing a shared ecosystem of mutual understanding, support, and prosperity in New Mexico.
 

Impact Investment

New Power Labs (NPL) is a non-profit partnership to build a more transparent, inclusive, and equitable financial future in Canada.

With this grant, NPL will accelerate access to, and allocation of, capital for communities and groups that are often excluded, such as immigrants. There is systemic bias and discrimination in how capital flows, disproportionately affecting underrepresented communities – NPL’s initial research suggests Canadian foundations almost exclusively invest in white or male impact fund managers. NPL seeks to disrupt the status quo through its inclusive collective impact platform. This grant would fund NPL to design and execute six different programs to strengthen research initiatives, education curriculum, and general operations.

Grant – General Operating Support

Oakland Bloom’s mission is to advance economic equity and create pathways to business ownership for poor and working-class refugee and immigrant chefs in Oakland, Calif., by providing food entrepreneurship training, income-generating opportunities, and hands-on support to aspiring chef entrepreneurs from refugee, immigrant, and low-income communities who are seeking to launch their own food businesses. 

The WES Mariam Assefa Fund is supporting two new initiatives at Oakland Bloom. The first, a collectively owned commissary kitchen, has been a long-time goal for the organization. Oakland Bloom is working to complete the buildout and launch of a space for the kitchen collective in partnership with worker-owners. Oakland Bloom is also exploring opportunities to launch a restaurant group cooperative that will provide start-up funds, back-end technical support, and shared financial risk to new food businesses. The cooperative model will center chef leadership, decision-making power, and equity in the new businesses. 

Grant – General Operating Support

Ohlone College is a public community college offering 189 associate degrees and certificates to 15,000 students per year at three campuses in Northern California. A majority of folks resettled from Afghanistan over the past eight months have settled in communities with established Afghan communities, including Northern Virginia and the surrounding D.C. area; Texas and Northern California. Part of Fremont, where Ohlone College has its primary campus, is unofficially known as “Little Kabul” and is among the largest Afghan communities in the U.S. 

A grant from the Fund will support the Ohlone College Career Center, whose mission is to change lives through innovation by connecting students and the community to future careers. Within its mission, their services extend to all members of the community. The proposed initiative is a partnership between Ohlone College and the Alameda County Workforce Development Board, providing individuals with the opportunity to begin careers in the advanced manufacturing industry. Participants of the 8-week Smart Manufacturing Technology Back to Work (SMTech B2W) Program will complete a paid apprenticeship while receiving 18 hours of virtual training encompassing manufacturing safety, blueprint reading, and other field-related modules. Upon completion, graduates will receive an industry-recognized certificate qualifying them for immediately available open positions from participating employers. Ohlone’s career services programs create an environment where resettled refugees feel supported and encouraged in their journey toward employment and upward economic mobility. 

GOS 

One Fair Wage (OFW) is a national movement-building organization, led by women of color, that organizes service workers, employers, and consumers to raise wages and working conditions in the service sector and end all subminimum wages in the United States. OFW strongly commits to racial, gender, and economic equity and justice and to developing the voice and leadership of restaurant and service workers. With over 13.6 million workers, the restaurant industry is the largest employer of workers of color in the U.S. However, it is also the lowest-paying industry. OFW works to support restaurant workers of color through initiatives including High Road Kitchens, which has provided $7 million in a combination of public and private funds to restaurants in California that are committed to livable wages and increased racial equity. 

With this grant, OFW will expand High Road Kitchens nationally in partnership with local, state, and federal policymakers. Over the next several years the program plans to support 1,000 restaurants in raising wages and equity for more than 20,000 low-wage workers of color. Due to the pandemic, restaurant workers have encountered various challenges including increased health risks, customer hostility, and a decrease in tips. The restaurant industry is now facing its worst staffing crisis in history and OFW is working to provide training and technical assistance to employers in order to support restaurants that are committed to raising wages and increasing equity.  

Grant – General Operating Support

The Ontario Employment Education & Research Centre (OEERC) is committed to improving public education and awareness of workplace legislation, as well as providing support and strategies for workers who have experienced violations of their rights. It delivers its programming utilizing the expertise of community organizations such as the Workers’ Action Centre, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, and Caregivers Action Centre.  

With this grant, The OEERC, in partnership with the Workers’ Action Centre, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, and Caregivers Action Centre, is building capacity to reduce barriers that prevent immigrant and refugee workers from accessing employment in various sectors. Inequalities in the labour market have always existed, yet COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated them. The OEERC and its partners are providing immediate support to workers affected by COVID-19, while also building long-term worker leadership and organizing capacity to address systemic barriers to decent work and drive system-level change through advocacy. 

 Grant – Project Support

PeaceGeeks is a Vancouver-based international technology non-profit that creates digital tools to support greater connection, peace, and safety for those who have been displaced. It develops products and research to transform newcomer journeys and strengthen human rights around the world. The partner organization in this initiative, Immigrant Networks, launched during the pandemic, offers an online on-demand peer-matching platform for newcomers.

With this innovative pilot grant, PeaceGeeks and immigrant Networks as partners will focus on testing a digital mentorship platform (Immentor) with 12 service provider organizations (SPOs) across three provinces in Canada to assess the interest in and feasibility of a shared tech platform among membership agencies for managing mentorship programs. The partners hope that a shared mentorship platform can improve newcomers’ access to mentorship and employability and allow more SPOs to start offering mentorship to their participants. The initiative is based on observations gleaned from a previous pilot project implemented by PeaceGeeks with funding from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada called Skilled Newcomers and Professionals Partnership (SNAPP).

Grant

Peel Halton Workforce Development Group (PHWDG) is one of 26 Ontario workforce-planning boards. The group’s goal is to improve and coordinate community responses to labour market challenges. PHWDG gathers intelligence about the supply and demand side of the labour market, works closely with employers to identify and support regional planning to meet emerging skill needs, and coordinates responses to connect those communities over-represented among the unemployed and underemployed with in-demand skills and jobs. 

The Fund is supporting PHWDG, in partnership with the City of Brampton’s Economic Development Office (BED) and workforce development consultants at Purpose Co. to convene employers in the warehouse, logistics and truck transportation sectors in the City of Brampton. They will work with employers that are experiencing workforce challenges and interested in implementing new practices that will better engage, integrate, retain and maximize the local immigrant talent. The City of Brampton has a population of 600,000 people, of which over 52.3% of the population are immigrants.

Grant – Project Support

The Pioneer Valley Workers Center (PVWC) equips and empowers low-wage and immigrant workers throughout Western Massachusetts. Worker-leaders develop and organize grassroots campaigns for food chain workers’ rights to win wage theft protections and stop deportations, and advance the solidarity economy through worker cooperatives. 

With support from this grant, PVWC’s Vida Cooperativa program offers cooperative economics worker trainings and cooperative business incubation. Riquezas Del Campo is a 4.5 acre cooperative farm, owned by PVWC majority-immigrant members, which serves as the program’s anchor.  The farm became a crucial source of food for PVWC’s mutual aid community food distributions as COVID-19 hit, offering fresh, free produce to a wide variety of low-wage workers suffering from unemployment and underemployment. The cooperatives strengthen food security and generate vital income opportunities across PVWC’s membership and the wider Western Massachusetts immigrant community. 

 Grant – General Operating Support

The Pivot Fund is a new venture philanthropy organization dedicated to investing $500 million in independent community news outlets led by Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color. Through grantmaking, development support, and strategic consulting, the Pivot Fund is disrupting journalism and philanthropy by centering and investing in culturally competent news organizations.  The Pivot Fund provides capacity building, training, and opportunities for collaborative journalism. 

This grant will assist the Pivot Fund in providing resources to ensure that more fact-driven, local, and trusted information reaches immigrant communities and communities of color across the U.S. here will be a focus on supporting two to three independent news outlets that inform immigrant communities in Georgia. 

Impact Investment  

Project Equity is a national non-profit with a mission of fostering economic resilience in low-income communities by demonstrating and replicating strategies that increase worker ownership.  The Employee Ownership Catalyst Fund supports businesses that need capital to finance a transition to employee ownership.   The Employee Ownership Catalyst Fund hopes to create a more resilient and secure future for America’s small businesses and frontline workers, particularly workers of color and immigrant workers. 

With support from the WES Mariam Assefa Fund, Project Equity will provide working capital for employee ownership feasibility, setup, and advising. The grant will also assist in the creation and funding of a broad-based employee ownership vehicle of at least 30 percent employee ownership, via mid-term debt or debt-like financing. 

Grant – General Operating Support

The Refugee Livelihood Lab (RLL) is a program within RADIUS, a social innovation hub of the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. Launched in 2018, RLL works to dismantle systemic barriers and generate opportunities for refugees, immigrants, and international students to pursue thriving livelihoods in the Greater Vancouver region. RLL seeks to facilitate systems change and achieve migrant justice by building power within communities through leadership development, convening, and advocacy. 

RLL is developing two key initiatives to support the economic and social inclusion of immigrant and refugee leaders: 

• Beyond Borders is an equity-focused social innovation program through which migrants of colour who are leaders in their community develop and prototype a social venture or service innovation that addresses socio-economic barriers. 
• Trampoline: Ideas into Action! is a venture incubation program. Selected participants go through a highly participatory prototype validation and incubation process. 

The ventures developed and launched by RLL participants will foster greater innovation in the sector and help grow the social entrepreneurship field in Canada. RLL will ensure that immigrant leaders are equipped with critical skills and knowledge that enable them to drive change in their communities and advance their careers.   

 Grant – General Operating Support

Rainbow Railroad is an international non-profit organization that helps LGBTQI+ people who are facing persecution based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics. In a time when there are more displaced people than ever before, LGBTQI+ people are uniquely vulnerable due to systemic, state-enabled homophobia and transphobia. These factors either displace them in their own country or prevent them from escaping harm.

This grant will primarily help support Rainbow Railroad’s post-travel resettlement support activities in Canada, including financial assistance, shelter, legal assistance and documentation, and mental health resources. Additionally, the grant will help Rainbow Railroad afford costs associated with coordinating applicant and volunteer sponsor groups through the Government of Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees (PSR) program. More specifically, this grant will help Rainbow Railroad support approximately 500 individuals in 2023 with post-travel needs, including 10 PSR applicants who will resettle in Canada in 2023 and 20 applicants waiting abroad, currently stuck in processing backlogs.

Impact Investing

The REAL People’s Fund (“the Fund”) is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation created to advance economic justice and opportunity for underrepresented communities in the East Bay area, specifically in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. “REAL” stands for revolutionizing our economy for all local people. The Fund was incubated in 2020 within the East Bay Community Foundation and is the result of a multi‐year collaboration among six grassroots nonprofit organizations with a shared vision to build economic power for historically underinvested communities in the East Bay. Founding organizations include The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), Oakland Rising, Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) United, and Restore Oakland. 

The investment would allow the Fund to implement a new community governance model and provide access to affordable capital for BIPOC-owned small businesses in the East Bay. The Fund challenges traditional approaches to deploying capital and places the community at the center of the decision-making process. In doing so, the Fund advances a more inclusive economy that gives community members a voice in how capital is deployed. Through the Fund, representatives of six grassroots organizations oversee a community-controlled loan fund supporting small businesses essential to the community’s economic health. The Fund will make loans to small, BIPOC-owned businesses based in Alameda and Contra Costa counties using more inclusive credit underwriting policies (i.e., relationship-based). Its loan products carry flexible terms and require no collateral. This initiative is expected to create and expand access to good jobs in the East Bay area, especially for those who face the largest barriers to employment. 

Impact Investment

The Social Impact Fund is a partnership between the International Rescue Committee’s Center for Economic Opportunity (IRC-CEO) and the Refugee Investment Network (RIN). It directly provides financial access and inclusion to hundreds of immigrants and refugees across the United States. IRC-CEO is a certified community development financial institution (CDFI) which brings more than 15 years of experience making flexible, affordable consumer and microenterprise loans to borrowers who have little access to traditional financing, particularly those in refugee and immigrant communities. 

 Since launching in May of 2020, the Social Impact Fund (SIF) has made 240 loans totaling $525,000 financed. More than 64 percent of SIF borrowers have been in the U.S. for less than three years, and the cohort represents 35 countries of origin. Financial access is critical to economic mobility, yet many immigrants and refugees are unbanked or underbanked and as a result face barriers to capital needed to buy a car, start a business, further their education, or carry out other everyday activities. The RIN-CEO Social Impact Fund promotes upward economic mobility among immigrants and refugees in low-income households by supporting the development of financial resilience and filling gaps in available financial services.  

GOS

RUSA LGBTQ+ (RUSA) is a network of LGBTQ+ immigrants and supporters from the former Soviet Union, including asylum seekers from Ukraine, Russia, Armenia, and other former Soviet states. As the largest organization in the United States explicitly working with this demographic, RUSA supports asylum seekers and refugees on their journeys to becoming American citizens, serves as an advocate of LGBTQ+ justice, and fosters community among Russian-speaking LGBTQ+ people residing in the United States.

With support from the Fund, RUSA will be able to increase its capacity to support asylum seekers and refugees in the city. To meet the increasing needs of the rapidly expanding community, grant funding will support the hiring of at least two part-time staff members who will coordinate community services, facilitate partnerships, and spearhead advocacy efforts. RUSA focuses its efforts on referral services for constituents, such as providing information on where to seek housing, health care, cash support, and workforce development services.

Grant – General Operating Support

Saskatoon Open Door Society (SODS) has provided services and programs to the newcomer community in Saskatoon for the past 40 years. SODS envisions a diverse and inclusive community where newcomers can fully participate in the economic, social, intellectual and cultural life in Saskatoon.   

With this funding, SODS is educating BIPOC and newcomer communities in Saskatoon who are facing heightened levels of vaccine hesitancy. The project will incorporate vaccine awareness and readiness to encourage the safe use of the vaccine for all eligible people through group programming, social media, promotional materials, and providing transportation to newcomers.

Impact Investment

Social Economy through Social Inclusion (SETSI) is a Toronto-based non-profit committed to advancing inclusion, diversity, equity, and access in the impact investing ecosystem in Canada. Its mission is to create prosperity and abundance through social innovation. With an emphasis on supporting historically under-represented communities, SETSI aims to establish a thriving social economy for start-ups and emerging leaders.  

The Fund is supporting SETSI’s Impact Investing Research Initiative (IIRI), an in-depth examination of the relationship between the African Canadian community and the impact investing ecosystem. The goal of this research initiative is to analyze the extent to which African Canadians are meaningfully engaged or systematically excluded from impact investing, and explore opportunities for partnership, collaboration, and innovation. SETSI seeks to bring transparency to the Canadian impact investing market, demonstrate what culturally safe and culturally appropriate capital looks like, create a foundation to address access issues, and build a movement of values-aligned investors.

Grant

Solid State Community Society is building a network of worker co-operative enterprises with youth from racialized migrant families. This co-op of co-ops launched in 2017 and operates in Surrey, BC – a very diverse but segregated city, full of tensions, frustrations, and violence, especially affecting youth from racialized migrant and Indigenous families. The aim is for the co-ops to grow and become autonomous but never truly independent. Solid State hopes they will remain entwined formally and informally, contributing to the larger co-op of co-ops that keeps exploring different, non-exploitative, non-extractive ways to work and organize together.  

With this funding, Solid State is extending its work to collaborate with grassroots organizations and low-income racialized communities that are often ignored and invisible in Surrey and build new, culturally appropriate and durable workers co-ops as a result. Solid State plans to launch at least 10 new co-ops over two years in close partnership with local organizations and support them with Solid State’s institutional resources and their co-op of co-ops. 

Grant – General Operating Support

Solidarity Across Borders (SAB) is a network of migrants and allies who organize together to support individuals and families confronting an unjust immigration and refugee system, in particular those living without status or with precarious immigration status (undocumented). As a movement, SAB is organized around demands for an end to deportations, detentions, and double jeopardy, as well as implementation of a continuous, inclusive, and comprehensive regularization program (the “status for all” campaign).

This grant will help SAB keep its emergency fund operational and open beyond January 2023, when its current funding was forecast to expire. This emergency fund provides direct support to migrants to meet their essential needs. That includes funding for rent, food, medication, and transportation, as well as fees for applications to regularize status or obtain a work permit. This fund is often the only support available to migrants secure immigration status who cannot access government services. Most people who receive support through SAB’s emergency fund are part of the network and are on the front line of work for structural change.

Grant

South Vancouver Neighbourhood House (SVNH) is a community-based organization that focuses on connecting people and strengthening neighbourhoods in South Vancouver. Its goal is to develop harmonious relationships among community groups of different cultural, economic, religious, and social backgrounds. SVNH currently offers a variety of programs and services that support approximately 7,000 individuals and their families each year. 

South Vancouver has a population of over 100,000 people, with 80 percent people of color, 56 percent newcomers, and a high density of non-English speakers. Many of these residents have been underrepresented in municipal, provincial, and federal systems, which has led to long-term under-investment across the region. This project will bring together residents, business owners, employers, community agencies, and other stakeholders and provide a platform for community members to engage with one another, identify needs, and advance systems change from the grassroots level. Through community outreach and dialogues, SVNH is supporting residents to create change and advance equity in their neighbourhoods.  

Grant – General Operating Support

Sueños Sin Fronteras de Tejas (SSFTX) is a Latinx, women of color-led, non-profit organization whose aim is to achieve health, healing, and liberation for immigrant, undocumented, refugee, and asylum-seeking women and families in South Texas through community-based programming and advocacy. Based out of San Antonio, SSFTX works from a health equity and reproductive justice lens to identify and challenge structures that dehumanize and oppress women and families of color. 

SSFTX’s work addresses domestic violence, reproductive health issues, and immigration challenges, centering self-determination and ally support in solidarity rather than charity. Examples of these strategies include frequent needs assessments, community mutual aid, and utilization of community health advocates. Since its founding, SSFTX has uplifted the health and healing of more than 30,000 migrant and immigrant individuals in South Texas.

Grant – General Operating Support  

Suma is a new non-profit focused on putting technology at the center of community organizing efforts. It began as a 2019 program of Verde, an environmental justice organization that reinterpreted sustainability as an anti-poverty strategy. In response to community members’ interest in learning more about technology, Verde launched its Suma program to adapt the lessons of its environmental justice work to the adjacent tech sector. Suma envisions a technology future that is inclusive of low-income people, people of color, and other frontline communities through digital organizing and enterprise development. 

Suma is working to ensure a technology future that is inclusive and community-led, beginning in Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood, a diverse and low-income area that is home to affordable housing occupied by many immigrants and refugees. Suma works in the community to present digital capacity building curriculum. Through bilingual presentations, discussion, and hands-on exercises, participants acquire digital skills, discover and share tools that safeguard personal information, and develop a shared awareness of the value of their personal data. 

Grant

Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB) is pioneering labour mobility as a complementary solution to refugee resettlement in multiple countries. It works to match refugees with career opportunities and support forcibly displaced people to leverage their skills to secure their futures. Through TBB’s model, refugees earn employment in a third country and embark on economic migration pathways, regaining regular status and rights while securing their livelihoods. TBB is collaborating with Jumpstart Refugee Talent (Jumpstart) for this initiative.  

TBB is building on the Canadian federal government’s expansion of access to the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot, a program welcoming displaced people through Canada’s economic immigration streams. TBB aims to increase the number of refugees directly benefiting from this program in Canada. In partnership with Jumpstart, the two organizations are establishing the Refugee 500 Taskforce to advance this goal, a coalition of Canadian businesses, refugee-serving organizations, immigrant specialists and refugee leaders. At the same time, TBB and Jumpstart will enable Canadian businesses to search for candidates in the Talent Catalog, a unique online platform to collect comprehensive data on the professional profiles of displaced people. 

Grant – Project Support

The Tamarack Institute, founded in 2001, develops and supports collaborative strategies to engage individuals and institutions in solving major community issues across Canada and beyond. Tamarack uses a multi-sectoral strategy—working with non-profit leaders, policymakers, advocates, businesses, and individuals with lived experience—to drive impactful community change.   

Tamarack is designing and implementing an innovative participatory grantmaking pilot in a selected community in Ontario. Through the pilot, the community will identify projects and organizations to fund that help remove economic barriers and build inclusive economies for immigrants and refugees in this community.  Tamarack is engaging a group of community-based stakeholders to identify needs, co-design approaches, and make funding decisions. This project will also help the Fund learn about participatory grantmaking and use what it learns to more effectively address power imbalances and advance equity by refining its funding strategies. 

Project Support

Team TLC NYC is the New York City chapter of Grannies Respond/Abuelas Responden, which provides compassionate and respectful support for asylum seekers and immigrants trying to find safety and security in the United States. Team TLC NYC is an entirely volunteer-run grassroots organization providing supportive services to meet the basic needs of asylum seekers arriving in the city.

With this grant, Team TLC NYC will increase its capacity to serve as a first line of support for asylum seekers arriving at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, providing them with food, clothing, and shelter, and fostering connections to family and sponsors where possible. Additionally, Team TLC NYC has become a vital referral partner and has strong relationships with other organizations providing continued supportive services to asylees, such as the Department of Homeless Services, Artists Athletes Activists, and the Church of the Holy Apostles. Through its robust network of connections, TLC NYC aims to supply sustained on-the-ground services to immigrants and asylum seekers in need.

Grant

TechEquity Collaborative envisions a world where the growth of the tech industry creates economic prosperity for everyone, and where teach sector employees and companies are engaged and active participants in making our economy equitable. Their mission is to mobilize tech workers and companies to advance structural change that addresses economic inequity at its roots. 

With this grant, TechEquity is launching the Contract Worker Disparity Project which focuses on research and advocacy to address the caste system that exists in the tech workforce between directly-employed full-time workers and those that are “contracted out” through staffing agencies and other vendors. Survey data shows that contract workers disproportionately include Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, women, and nonbinary people. This work builds on TechEquity’s other programs including affordable housing policy and a labor standard for workers in low-wage jobs that serve tech company campuses, including janitors, security officers, shuttle drivers, and food service workers. 

Grant

The Drivers Cooperative is a worker cooperative of over 3,000 for-hire vehicle drivers in New York City, where 91% of the drivers are immigrants, and 70% are the main wage earners in their households. Through cooperative ownership and community organizing, The Driver Cooperative works to end exploitative conditions in the for-hire vehicle industry by putting drivers in the driver’s seat of the platform economy.  

The cooperative originated in a participatory action research project funded by The Workers Lab and Capital Impact Partners. In April 2020, they launched the Co-op Ride, the world’s first driver-owned ride-hailing platform cooperative to build community wealth for drivers through worker ownership and provide a just, green model in the for-hire vehicle industry. The Driver’s Cooperative offers near-term benefits for their driver-members as well as upskilling and training opportunities in the IT sector, and Organizing Fellowship program, language access and digital literacy resources, and mutual aid programs. With this grant, they are expanding their membership and scaling nationwide through a “social franchise” system.

Project Support  

The Momentum Centre (TMC) is a leader in economic and workforce development. The organization works extensively with employers and industry, youth, and equity-deserving groups such as Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of colour, youth, ex-offenders, immigrants, newcomers, and refugees to advance Manitoba’s labour market objectives. Using a demand-driven approach, TMC operates in partnership with employers to provide employability and leadership training, professional development, and work experience, giving participants the opportunity to translate their knowledge and competencies to align with employer needs. 

With support from the Fund, TMC will implement a project to address labour market demand and skill shortages in the STEM fields by developing a sustainable process to increase access to work-integrated learning opportunities for international students and employers. In order to foster more equitable, diverse, and inclusive workplaces, TMC will provide professional development, employability skills training, and networking opportunities for students to prepare them to transition to sustainable employment. TMC aims to retain more international students while supporting meaningful labour market transitions into STEM in Manitoba, Canada.  

Project Support 

The Refugee Centre (TRC) is a registered nonprofit based in Montreal that aims to provide a sustainable structure of integration for refugees and immigrants in Canada. Its organizational structure is based on a multifaceted approach—educational, social, and economic—that encompasses the obstacles refugees and immigrants face today. TRC provides an array of services including language classes, legal aid, academic aid, employment aid, newcomer orientation, and wellness support. Additionally, TRC strives to support vulnerable individuals, including undocumented refugees, immigrants, low-income individuals, members of racialized communities, members of LGBTQ2S+ communities, and Indigenous individuals. 

To facilitate career pathways and workforce development for newcomers and refugees, TRC will create a system of NGO and employer partnerships. Through such partnerships, TRC will provide training workshops to partner employers. Employers will learn about common barriers for newcomers and refugees in recruitment, hiring, promotion, and retention practices, as well as best practices for inclusive policies. Approximately 250 to 300 newcomers and refugees in Montreal will receive wraparound support. TRC’s initiative will assist newcomers and refugees who are underemployed, unemployed, or precariously employed, including those with nonrecognized or unregulated degrees who are currently working low-wage positions in Montreal. 

Grant 

Established in 2003, The Welcoming Center addresses the barriers immigrants face entering the U.S. workforce. It promotes inclusive economic growth by supporting immigrants in the Philadelphia area, which make up to 20% of the local labor force, through programming focused on workforce development, entrepreneurship, and civic participation.  

In its work as one of the Fund’s 2019 inaugural grantee partners, TWC provided a toolkit called Engaging Immigrant Talent which uses an asset-based approach to provide employers with practical steps to better support the recruitment, hiring, retention, and promotion of immigrants into the U.S. workforce. This grant is providing critical general operating support for TWC while it develops and begins implementing a new strategic plan and ensure they can continue investing in the work to deepen the impact of the Engaging Immigrant Talent toolkit. 

Grant – General Operating Support

TIS Foundation commits to creating dynamic, innovative solutions to economic inequities and social exclusions by focusing on filling gaps in critical community services through family and youth-centered initiatives. Through their workforce development programs and wrap-around services, TIS Foundation identifies pathways for immigrant communities to not become self-sufficient and thrive economically. 

A grant from the Fund will support the Afghans Learning to Lead and Innovate as Entrepreneurs Strategy (ALLIES), a program dedicated to fostering long-term economic prosperity through innovative workforce development programs that help individuals overcome every barrier to success. As resettlement agencies scale down support due to federally mandated budgets and operational timescales, ALLIES aims to fill the gaps and provide long-term support for the new arrivals from Afghanistan in the National Capital Region. Additionally, TIS Foundation continues to build capacity for its services in the Washington DC metropolitan area, they are set to open an Urban Campus in Fall 2022. The Urban Center will house the TIS Innovation Center, which will serve as a service hub for ALLIES. 

 Grant – Project Support

Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN) represents a coalition of more than 85 community and labour organizations, including workforce development agencies, learning institutions, and funders. TCBN cultivates and supports the implementation of community benefits agreements (CBAs) with transit and infrastructure development projects in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to increase apprenticeship, training, and employment opportunities for communities, including newcomers, who face barriers to employment.

With this new grant, TCBN will recruit, train, and develop community benefits ambassadors—emerging leaders from TCBN’s pool of Black and other racialized individuals who have already been successfully placed in construction trades or professional, administrative, and technical (PAT) jobs. The ambassadors will support TCBN’s campaigns for community benefits agreements and quality jobs in neighbourhoods where massive public infrastructure projects are imminent or occurring. TCBN will provide ambassadors with knowledge, skills, and resources to help build communities that are prepared to negotiate a CBA.

Grant – Project Support

Founded in 2000, Upwardly Global is a leading U.S. non-profit supporting college-educated immigrants, refugees, and asylees in successfully transitioning their education, skills, and previous professional experience to the U.S. workforce. To date, the organization has assisted more than 6,500 people in successfully rebuilding professional careers in the U.S. Upwardly Global envisions an equitable, more welcoming nation where everyone—including immigrants, refugees, and asylees—can fully contribute and thrive. 

With the support of the WES Mariam Assefa Fund, Upwardly Global is designing, piloting, and launching Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) products and resources for a wide range of employers, including small, medium-sized, and Fortune 500 enterprises, to improve immigrant and refugee recruitment, hiring, and long-term workplace inclusion and advancement. By leveraging its job placement expertise and extensive network of employer partners, Upwardly Global is uniquely positioned to design well-rounded support systems that employers can use to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse nation.

General Operating Support

Upwardly Global is a national non-profit with a mission to eliminate employment barriers for immigrant and refugee professionals and advance the inclusion of their skills into the U.S. economy. The organization envisions an equitable, welcoming country that embraces full diversity of our workforce.

With support from the WES Mariam Assefa Fund, Upwardly Global will be able to educate and engage employers and policymakers so they are equipped to be informed, culturally champions of immigrant and refugee hiring and workforce inclusion, with the aim of transforming systems that impact internationally trained and educated immigrants in the U.S. The organization will also expand efforts of the past two years to engage employers; providing education, skills, and training for job seekers; and deepen advocacy and policy efforts on behalf of just systems.

GOS

The mission of Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid (VIA) is to help forced migrants and asylum seekers from Venezuela in New York City by informing and empowering them. VIA advocates on behalf of people affected by the crisis in Venezuela, especially those seeking international humanitarian protection, and builds bridges between them and local organizations that can help them as they establish themselves in the United States.

The Fund is supporting VIA’s Legal Orientation Program, which provides legal workshops both in person and online. The program addresses asylum seekers’ information gaps that can often lead to misinformation about the immigration process, including when to apply for asylum and how to find an immigration lawyer. VIA plans to serve community needs by producing and disseminating printed and audiovisual material to keep immigrants and their advocates up to date on the rapid changes that can occur in immigration laws and regulations. Additionally, to supplement the work of volunteer lawyers, VIA will invest in training other volunteers in fundamental legal issues regarding immigration so they can adequately provide information and answer questions, allowing lawyers to attend to their most urgent and complex cases.

Grant – Project Support

Venture 2 Impact (V2I) uses human-centred design to solve complex challenges by linking global communities to skilled volunteers. Working with corporate partners, such as Google, Netflix, and Salesforce, V2I has launched and developed countless programs to deliver workforce development programs, including training and mentorship for formerly incarcerated men and women, and survivors of human trafficking. Their work has helped NGOs and people, especially women and girls, unlock their potential through training, mentorship, and technical tool development in North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. 

Across Canada, recent immigrants and refugees face high rates of both underemployment and unemployment, even though the country faces a shortage of skilled labour. To address these systemic barriers, V21 is partnering with Elevate Talent, a not-for-profit committed to uniting the world’s innovators to solve society’s greatest challenges. Together the two organizations developed Future Link – a pilot program that will provide the tools that employers need to create more inclusive and equitable environments for refugee, newcomer, and immigrant professionals to retain employment and grow in their careers and improve tech training to set job seekers up for success. The Fund’s investment will support further access to career mentorship and networking opportunities for refugees, immigrants, and newcomers.  

Grant – General Operating Support

Watari has facilitated meaningful change and provided a bridge to healthier possibilities in at-risk children, youth, families affected by substance misuse or mental health issues in the Downtown Eastside and the Lower Mainland since 1986. Their key success comes through innovative, community-driven, and supportive programming based on an individual’s innate strengths, capabilities, and desire for wellness to the communities we support. During these challenging times, street-level community outreach, counselling services, food security programs, and community and public education projects are still being delivered to marginalized communities. 

With this funding, Watari is supporting the Vancouver Coastal Health, Island Health, and Ray Cam Cooperative Centre, running vaccination clinics. Watari’s vaccine clinics do not require IDs to limit the anxieties of undocumented persons.

 Grant – General Operating Support

Workers’ Action Centre (WAC) is a worker-based organization committed to improving the lives and working conditions of people in low-wage and unstable employment. WAC organizes for decent work with a belief that the leaders in the fight for decent work should be the workers directly affected by poor working conditions. WAC’s members are workers with precarious jobs and are mainly recent immigrants, migrants, racialized workers, and low-wage workers who face discrimination, violations of their rights, and unstable employment.

With this general operating support grant WAC will continue its much-needed and impactful work helping immigrant and migrant workers navigate the realities of the labour market, providing support to workers facing violations of their rights, and advancing policy solutions to address systemic inequities. Some key focus areas for WAC in the next two years include continuing support of workers in the community, providing new modalities of worker leadership development and training to involve more workers, and continuing to advocate for important issues involved in regularization, employment insurance, gig workers’ rights, and temp agencies.

Grant – Project Support

Workforce Matters is a network of grantmakers drawing on expert and practitioner knowledge to strengthen workforce development philanthropy to support workers, learners, and job seekers in pursuing the careers and lives they desire. In 2021, Workforce Matters published A Racial Equity Framework for Workforce Development Funders, which explored ways in which funders can disrupt the systemic racism within the sector and provided key policy recommendations that would support workers and learners of color.  

With support from the WES Mariam Assefa Fund and other funders, Workforce Matters is launching the Fund for Workforce Equity and issuing a call for proposals from workforce development organizations interested in and committed to centering workers of color in program and policy design. This partnership will facilitate peer learning between grantee partners and provide technical assistance, expertise, and resources on human-centered design and other best practices for elevating worker and learner voices. The Fund for Workforce Equity will support access to career pathways programs that are integral to immigrant and refugee communities.  

Grant – Project Support

World University Services of Canada (WUSC) is a registered Canadian charitable organization committed to building a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable world for all youth, particularly refugees. Established in 1957, their strategic vision is of a world in which all young people can grow up in safe, secure, and supportive environments; have access to high-quality education; are able to secure fair, decent and fulfilling employment; and can participate actively in their society’s development. Since 2019, WUSC has expanded its refugee resettlement program by engaging Canadian employers to support the sponsorship and economic integration of refugee workers in Canada through the Hospitality Industry Welcomes Refugee Employment-Linked Sponsorship (HIRES), a workplace-led refugee sponsorship pilot. 

With support from the Fund, WUSC will expand on HIRES and implement Research for the Expansion of HIRES (RE-HIRES), an initiative that aims to provide 1) a strong evidence base to promote the use of workplace-led refugee sponsorship to increase Canadian employers’ engagement in the economic integration of refugees, 2) increase knowledge and awareness among Canadian employers and relevant policymakers on good practices and options to employ and integrate refugee workers, and 3) identify and assess opportunities to scale workplace-led refugee sponsorship to new sectors, geographies, and employers.