Ford Foundation Gives $200,000 Grant

KACF plans to use money for inter-community development

KACF recently received a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, the oldest and largest private foundation in the United States and a global leader in philanthropy.

The grant will be used over an 18-month period on inter-community relationship development initiatives undertaken by KACF.

“It is time for Korean Americans, Latinos and Africans to finally forge a common vision for community development in the most dynamic city in the United States,” said Miguel Garcia of the Ford Foundation. “Lessons learned [from] the civil disturbances in Los Angeles over a decade ago provide rich opportunities to reflect on those difficult times and to mobilize a common agenda for New York City.”

KACF Director of Program Development J. Robin Moon has designed four activity clusters, to be carried out in sequence or concurrently, to enable the organization to reach out and engage other communities of color within New York City region toward a joint community development agenda. It will commence with a series of extensive information-gathering exercises on the existing racial challenges that confront Korean Americans as they attempt to work with other minority communities.

Summary of Projects with the Ford Foundation:

(1) Inter-Community Collaborative Forum Series

KACF proposes to convene a series of three inter-community forums among Asian American, Latin American and African American community leaders in the New York Metropolitan area. The main goal of these events would be to serve as a forum where organizations serving different ethnic groups come together to start a dialogue that could possibly find some solutions to improve relations among them. It will allow KACF, as well as other leaders, to be informed of a community’s needs, and explore ways to facilitate strategies to address such needs.

(2) Korean American/Latino American/African American Race Relations Project Solicitation

KACF proposes a race relations initiative involving the solicitation of project proposals on promoting dialogue and collaboration among the Korean American and other ethnic communities in the New York Metropolitan area. The purpose is to set a two-part invitation that would allow for both conceptual thinking and subsequent refinements resulting in viable projects or programs. KACF will lead efforts to solicit innovative concepts on community development from various strata of the ethnic communities, and incubate them into concrete projects by providing technical assistance and bringing in potential funders for a judging panel.

(3) Corporate Donor Collaboration — Community Business Model

KACF will embark upon its own internal inter-community economic development initiative. KACF will launch a new agenda of mobilizing and empowering our existing donors to engage in cross-cultural programming. We anticipate that this new set of corporate partnerships will directly benefit low- to moderate-income individuals and families from New York City’s Latin American, African American and Korean American communities. A kickoff event this Thanksgiving will facilitate the donation of 2,000 winter jackets, manufactured by our corporate donor Bear, to the children of New York City. This event will initiate the rollout of a plan to launch an ambitious long-term program of community empowerment through business ownership.