Aiming to accelerate the integration of immigrants into Southern California life, a leading California foundation will announce today that it is issuing $900,000 in grants to help ease conflicts between blacks and Latinos in Pasadena, promote worker rights in Artesia, organize to bring supermarkets to minority neighborhoods and other initiatives.
The grants represent the first outlays in the California Community Foundation's five-year, $3.75-million initiative to help immigrants learn English, improve job skills, increase civic participation and build trust with African Americans and other residents.
Foundation President Antonia Hernandez said immigrants, who make up nearly half the Los Angeles workforce and contribute 40% of Los Angeles County's gross regional product, were essential to the broader society's well-being.
"In order to offer a good quality of life for everyone, we have to provide pathways and opportunities for newcomers to integrate," she said.
Six of the grants were aimed at increasing cross-cultural collaboration to solve community problems. Hernandez said they reflected one of the foundation's aims: to help minimize conflicts between immigrants and long-standing residents.
Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice of California, a grass-roots alliance of faith leaders, is set to receive $100,000 to build ties among evangelical Latino pastors, evangelical white ministers in Orange County and African American faith leaders in South Los Angeles. The Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, the alliance director, said immigrant pastors have shared stories about the wrenching impact of deportations on families, while African Americans have described the pain of violence among their youth.
The grant, she said, will help deepen ties beyond leaders and into the congregations.
In Artesia, the South Asian Network plans to use its $100,000 to launch efforts to bring together Latino and South Asian workers to press for labor rights. Hamid Khan, the network's executive director, said workers have reported problems with unsafe working conditions, sub-minimum wages, no overtime pay and other labor violations.
The grant will help break down isolation between workers of different cultures, develop multilingual material, bring in legal aid and launch an oral history project.
