$10,000 Big Brothers Big Sisters of Ventura County: For the One Step A La Vez Teen Drop-In Center, providing a safe space and advocacy and community organizing training for youth working to promote safety, tolerance and teen wellness in their schools and community. One of the youth’s current focuses is advocacy for greater resources and mental health services for teens and transitional aged youth in Piru/Fillmore/Rancho Sespe and Bardsdale.
$6,500 Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation: For the Empowering Neighborhoods Through Systems Change Project, to form and empower grassroots coalitions of diverse constituencies in the Meta Street/Five Points and El Rio neighborhoods to identify their community’s assets and areas for improvement, particularly around issues concerning safety, crime and environmental health.
$8,000 Central Coast Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE): For the Women’s Economic Justice Project, to support Centro Mujer, a women’s community organizing center for social change, and to provide leadership development training to low wage working women in Ventura County. The goals of the WEJP are to increase social capital and to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for low-wage working women to engage in the public policy decision-making process.
$7,675 The Foundation for Educational and Employment Resources (Café on A): For the CORE Leadership Project and the South Oxnard Tenant Rights & Youth Organizing Project, to empower and organize the south Oxnard community to engage in the public policy debate related to the Oxnard gang injunction and to organize residents living in substandard housing conditions to advocate for housing issues such as rent control, landlord accountability and community quality of life.
$5,900 Parents of Murdered Children-Ventura County Chapter: For the My Son Was Murdered: A Community Education and Violence Prevention Project, to create and show a video and presentation on the affect of a child’s murder on the surviving family members, with the goal of changing youth attitudes, beliefs and behaviors regarding violence and homicide.
$10,000 Ventura County Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice (VC CLUE): To raise the community organizing capacity of VC CLUE interfaith, non-partisan community leaders to respond to issues such as health care reform, affordable farm worker housing, intercultural understanding, immigrant rights, and discriminatory policies regarding employment.
$1,925 Veterans for Peace: For the Military Recruitment: Alternatives for Youth Program, to provide information to local high school youth and their parents regarding student rights to privacy of their personal information, ability to opt out of sharing their information with military recruiters, and non-military career options for youth in Ventura County.
