Inter-Community Development
In October 2005, KACF launched the Inter-Community Development initiative with a grant from the Ford Foundation. The goal was to engage other ethnic communities within the New York City region and organize a joint community development agenda. During the 18-month grant period, KACF pursued our goals through four-pronged strategies:
- Inter-Community Collaborative Forum Series
- Inter-Community-Development Fund
- Entrepreneur Ownership Initiative
- Computer Literacy Project
The Forum series was aimed at creating a sustained dialogue among ethnic immigrant community groups (i.e. Asian Americans, Latino American, African Americans) through a series of forums held over an eighteen-month period. Our objective was to deepen our understanding of each other and our collective challenges and, most importantly, to find and pursue solutions to improve collective relations.
KACF commissioned a report to document and summarize the Inter-Community Collaborative Forum series, prepared by Associate Professor Tarry Hum, Ph.D at Queens College, City University of New York. To read the report, please click here
The Inter-Community Development Fund was a grants program that funded new initiatives aimed at innovative programs that foster inter-community dialogue and understanding. On October 30, 2006, KACF awarded four grants totaling $33,000.
Loisaida, Inc.
KACF Grant: $10,000
To organize a youth development project that uses oral history, community narrative, art and technology to bring into focus the common themes in the history and life of the Hispanic, Asian-American and African-American communities living together in publish housing in Lower East Side.
Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project Immigrant Financial Justice Project
KACF Grant: $10,000
To support inter-ethnic economic development initiatives in immigrant neighborhoods that address international money transfers (remittances) sent by immigrants to their home countries and develop strategies that result in reduced costs to send money, community reinvestment by banks and money transfer companies, and/or the creation of community-controlled alternative financial services.
Latin American Integration Center
KACF Grant: $6500
To support youth leadership development program to address the issue of interethnic cooperation between Latino and Asian youth in Queens.
The Sunset Park Coalition for New Immigrants
KACF Grant: $6,500
To foster 25 potential local leaders, to be known as the New Immigrant Leadership Council, through a community activism and strategic planning Leadership Academy in the Chinese and Latino communities in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
The EOI was an innovative joint program between KACF and Bear USA (Bear) to explore how to bring entrepreneurship training and opportunities to inner city neighborhoods by marrying private enterprise (companies such as Bear, with private banks and other businesses) with the non-profit sector. The concept involved enabling trainees and employees from under-resourced communities to acquire equity ownership of their own entrepreneurial ventures; specifically, owning a Bear retail store.
KACF provided a seed funding to the Flushing YMCA to implement a program to provide access to and teach computer technologies to primarily Korean Americans seniors, with the goal of developing a prototype computer program with a well-documented curriculum to promote community empowerment that could be rolled out and applied in other communities.
Korean American Community Foundation
501 Fifth Ave, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10017
(212) 300.2145
info@kacfny.org
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