Community Fund for Immigrant Wellness invests $400,000 to promote culturally-centered strategies to improve mental health

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 21^st, 2022

(Philadelphia, PA) – The Community Fund for Immigrant Wellness is pleased to announce that it will invest $400,000 in 12 organizations that promote mental health and emotional wellbeing among immigrant communities in Greater Philadelphia. These organizations represent the third cohort of Community Fund for Immigrant Wellness grantees. Since its inception, the Community Fund has invested almost $900,000 in immigrant communities in Greater Philadelphia to promote mental health and emotional wellbeing.

Organizations receiving $10,000 flexible spending grants include:

• Centro de Apoyo Comunitario for their Bienstar Familiar program
• Immigrant Rights Action for their Building a Network of Support for Legal, Social, and Mental Health Needs program
• Kiths Integrated and Targeted Human Services for their KITHS Kitchen program
• New World Association of Emigrants from Eastern Europe for their Knowledge is Power program
• Palms Solutions for their Palm it Forward program

Organizations receiving $50,000 programmatic support grants include:

• Asian Americans United for their Anti-Asian Violence Healing Initiative
• Ethiopian Community Association of Greater Philadelphia for their Mental Health Council’s Crisis Support Program and Team
• Justice at Work (Friends of Farmworkers) for their Expanding Mental Health Access to Exploited Immigrant Workers program
• Project Libertad for their Jovenes Fuentes program
• Puentes de Salud for their Mental and Behavioral Health program
• SEAMAAC for their Immigrant Family Wellness program
• The Welcoming Center for their Intercultural Wellness Program

The grantees were selected through a participatory grantmaking process, designed to alter traditional philanthropic giving by elevating voices of individuals who are not typically at the decision-making table. A community-based Decision Making Group reviewed the applications and allocated grant dollars from a pooled fund. Decision Making Group members were nominated by the Advisory Board, whose member organizations include ACANA, AFAHO, HIAS PA, La Puerta Abierta, Nationalities Service Center, SEAMAAC, and The Welcoming Center.

“The Decision Making Group members brought unique personal backgrounds and professional expertise reflected in the thoughtful reviews and enriching discussions during review meetings,” says Decision Making Group member Onome Henry Osokpo, Provost Postdoctoral Fellow at NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health and Associate Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, University of Pennsylvania. “The Community Fund for Immigrant Wellness provided a flexible mechanism that incorporates an equity lens to shape the review process, allowing members to reach the final decisions on grants to be funded this cycle.”

In addition to grant dollars, grantees will also receive stipends to participate in a Community of Practice, where they will have the opportunity to build relationships, share their work, learn from one another, and develop collaborative projects. As a part of the Community of Practice, they will also be able to access a pool of funding for capacity building support.

“Building on the learnings from year’s past, the Community Fund is not only supporting individual grantees, but making a significant investment in the Community of Practice to develop an infrastructure that will leverage the work of all the grantees,” says Joe Pyle, President of the Scattergood Foundation. The Community of Practice will launch in April with a virtual kickoff event.

The Community Fund for Immigrant Wellness is committed to supporting organizations that promote mental health and emotional wellbeing in immigrant communities for at least an additional two cycles with multi-year support from the Douty Foundation, Patricia Kind Family Foundation, and the Scattergood Foundation. This cycle of the Community Fund for Immigrant Wellness was also supported by the City of Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services and the Paul D. Schurgot Foundation. The facilitation and administration of the Community Fund is completed by the Scattergood Foundation.

For more information, please contact Caitlin O’Brien, Director of Learning and Community Impact, at cobrien@scattergoodfoundation.org.

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The Scattergood Foundation believes major disruption is needed to build a stronger, more effective, compassionate, and inclusive health care system – one that improves well-being and quality of life as much as it treats illness and disease. At the Foundation, we THINK, DO, and SUPPORT in order to establish a new paradigm for behavioral health, which values the unique spark and basic dignity in every human.