Announcing Our First-Ever $10,000 Community Investment Award!
While we’ve distributed direct grants to our affiliates every year since 1994 (last year, we gave over $1.7 million), this year is the first year we’re offering a bonus grant to an affiliate selected by our Community Grants Circle (CGC).
Our CGC is a collective of individuals who participate and advise on Hope for New York’s grant-making process. This year, given their thorough due diligence process—including grant reviews and site visits to our affiliates—we wanted to give our CGC the chance to nominate the organization they felt was most deserving of an additional $10,000 grant, given on top of the direct grants we award.
Each CGC regional team (East Side, West Side, and Downtown) nominated one affiliate for a chance to win our inaugural Community Investment Award. Each of these organizations have compelling visions for a New York City in which all of their neighbors are flourishing.
- East Side Nominee: A House on Beekman, which supports children and families in the South Bronx with long-term care.
- West Side Nominee: All Angels’ Church, which serves the holistic needs of homeless men and women in their congregation on the West Side.
- Downtown Nominee: Brooklyn Arab American Friendship Center, which meets the felt needs of the Arab American immigrant community in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Last week, the CGC voted to award Brooklyn Arab American Friendship Center our first-ever $10,000 Community Investment Award! We’re so excited to see how they’ll serve their neighbors through a Vacation Bible School for children of Arab American immigrants, as well as through the addition of family and parenting classes.
Below, you can learn more about each of the three organizations that were nominated—all of which are doing incredible work in the city to love and serve their neighbors in need. And stay tuned to learn more about all that goes into Hope for New York’s grant-making process.
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A House on Beekman started when founder Sara Miller, one volunteer, and four pregnant women gathered in an abandoned church in the South Bronx, the neighborhood with the highest rate of poverty in America. Their mission? To join God in the renewal of the South Bronx.
They’ve grown a lot in the last five years, and their programs now include: babies to three, preschool, elementary afterschool, and summer camp. Their desire is to provide a seamless series of programs from birth to adulthood—and to go deeper, wider, and longer—to empower the next generation of the South Bronx to be leaders in their neighborhood: the head surgeons, the politicians, the principals.
To that end, AHOB is expanding its programs to add an after-school program for middle school students next year. And, as the only preschool provider in their neighborhood, they’re growing their preschool from 10 kids to 25.
All Angels’ Church was founded in the 1800s for recently freed slaves and immigrants. To this day, the poor, oppressed, and marginalized are integral members of their church body. This ministry is not an offshoot of the church, but is in the DNA of All Angels’ as they’ve long been a community for those who are disconnected and seeking a home.
At All Angels’, people are not seen as clients, but are known by their first name. As brothers and sisters. As unique people encouraged to live into their gifts and who they are as individuals.
When All Angels’ opened its doors for 36 hours during January’s blizzard, they had 57 people sleeping in their church and 70 people coming in off the street throughout the day. People shoveled together, played ping pong, and engaged in Bible studies. That organic sense of community is precisely what All Angels’ desires to cultivate in their ministries going forward.
Brooklyn Arab American Friendship Center
Dr. Fadia Farag moved to the United States from Egypt in 1990. After September 11, 2001, she started doing outreach to her Muslim neighbors on the streets. But then she realized a better way to show the love of Christ to these neighbors of hers: meeting their very real felt needs.
So, in 2004, she opened Brooklyn Arab American Friendship Center. She wanted to create a place where her Arab American immigrant neighbors felt loved and comfortable. By offering ESL, citizenship, and computer classes, she was able to build relationships with her neighbors, and they started to love and open up to her. They also started to love the Jesus she loves.
Dr. Fadia wants to be able to grow BAAFC’s programming to includes a Vacation Bible School for kids in the neighborhood, as well as family classes to help women and men gain a better understanding of what a biblical family looks like—and to help them parent well.