MIAMI – As part of ongoing efforts to support immigrant integration, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded $100,000 in grants to two grassroots immigrant organizations in Georgia.
Each grantee will receive $50,000 over the next two years to support immigrant integration efforts, including leadership development programs, English language classes, citizenship services and cultural competency training.
These organizations are helping hard-working, tax-paying immigrant families achieve self-sufficiency and become active participants in American civic life,” said Beverly Blake, program director for Columbus, Macon and Milledgeville, the Georgia communities where Knight serves as a local funder. “Our grants aim to expand that work and help put the American Dream within reach of immigrant families.”
The Georgia grantees are:
- Center for Pan Asian Community Services (CPACS). Located in Doraville, CPACS has provided culturally sensitive social and health services to the Asian and Pacific Islander immigrant population in Georgia since the center’s founding in 1977. Knight’s support will go toward programs in leadership development, nonpartisan voter education and naturalization.
- GALEO Latino Community Development Fund (GALEO LCDF). Founded in 2003, GALEO LCDF aims to engage the Latino community of Georgia in the political process through civic education. The GALEO Institute for Leadership program, which focuses on citizenship and voter education efforts, will receive the Knight money.
The awards add to the Knight Foundation’s 56-year history of grant making in the Georgia communities of Columbus, Macon and Milledgeville. Since the foundation was created in 1950, Knight has made 400 grants totaling more than $54 million to the three communities.
Since grant making through Knight’s American Dream Fund began last December, $1.77 million has been awarded to 36 grassroots organizations working in Knight communities. Grants are, with an exception made for organizations helping immigrant victims of Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, made on a biannual basis. Applications are by invitation; the next round of grants by the fund will be in the fall of 2006.
An initiative of Knight’s National Venture Fund, the $6 million American Dream Fund is the local component of the foundation’s national Immigrant Integration Initiative. The project aims to welcome newcomers into American life by encouraging civic participation, particularly with regards to naturalization and English language proficiency.
While Knight Foundation is the sole contributor to the American Dream Fund, the foundation coordinates its broader immigrant strategy with other funding partners through the Four Freedoms Fund, including Carnegie Corp. of New York, Ford Foundation, Open Society Institute, Joyce Foundation, the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund. National, the Horace Hagedorn Foundation and Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.The nonprofit groups supported by Knight in its work to increase immigrant civic participation are the National Immigration Forum, Center for Community Change, National Council of La Raza and Hispanics in Philanthropy.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of Columbus, Macon, Milledgeville and other communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. To see and hear stories of Knight’s transformational funding in the field of immigration, visit www.knightfdn.org/annual.