FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 28, 2011

Contact:
Zavé Martohardjono
Media and Communications Officer
Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice
communications@astraeafoundation.org

NEW YORK, NY— The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a leader in national and international grantmaking and philanthropic advocacy for lesbian-led and LGBTI organizations, announced the growth of Grants leadership into two positions.  Effective January 1st, 2012, Sangeeta Budhiraja will join the Astraea Foundation as Director of Programs and Mai Kiang, current Director of Programs, will assume a newly developed position as Director of Grantmaking.

The two director model is critical to Astraea’s work and will position the Foundation as a leader in philanthropic advocacy. A stronger grantmaking structure will increase programmatic capacity and allow the foundation to reach wider audiences and deepen its collaborative work with grantee partners.

Since its beginning, the Astraea Foundation’s approach has been to build capacity, grow leadership and amplify the advocacy of emerging activist groups.  Thirty-four years later, Astraea has grown into a philanthropic leader, funding LGBTQI organizations across  40 countries in addition to the United States.  Astraea grantees work in coalition-building, lead policy campaigns and fight for LGBTQI rights around the globe.  “We are passionate about continuing our legacy and thrilled to be able to expand our reach,” says Mai Kiang who has worked at Astraea in many capacities.  Prior to becoming a Director at Astraea, Mai served on the Board of Directors and was a long time donor and community activist.

“It feels like a homecoming,” says Sangeeta Budhiraja who like Kiang, also has roots with the Astraea Foundation.  Budhiraja previously worked as a consultant for Astraea from 2005 to 2007 on the International Grants Fund Panel.  “I am thrilled to be returning to the Astraea family at such an important time.”  She will be joining the Foundation after four years as the Program Officer at the Ms. Foundation for Women, where she managed the Foundation’s Movement Building, Southern Strategy, and Economic Justice Initiatives.  Budhiraja, who holds a JD from CUNY Law School has strong ties in the LGBTQI community and consulted with FIERCE!, Queers for Economic Justice, and also worked at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission as the Program Coordinator for Asia and the Pacific.

Executive Director, J. Bob Alotta is thrilled with the new structure and hire.  “Sangeeta is a brilliant addition to an already stellar team.  Our new programmatic structure will allow both directors to shine and increase Astraea’s impact exponentially.  I’m very much looking forward to working with Mai and Sangeeta as we continue to turn transition into transformation.”

Sangeeta Budhiraja brings over a decade of movement building experience and philanthropic advocacy skills to the Astraea Foundation as a seasoned activist, organizer, educator and advocate.   Sangeeta joins the Astraea Foundation after four years as Program Officer at the Ms. Foundation for Women, where she managed the Foundation’s Movement Building, Southern Strategy, and Economic Justice Initiatives.  During her time as Regional Program Coordinator for Asia and the Pacific at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), Sangeeta served as member of Astraea’s International Funds panel. She also worked as a consultant to the International Fund from 2005-2007, and has worked with many of Astraea’s international grantee partners.  Sangeeta’s expertise with international women’s human rights, sexual rights, racial and economic justice is paired with a strong base in local movement building. She i

LGBTQ Southeast Asian Youth Build Solutions

A small cadre of impassioned youth formed Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM) and for nine years they have been redirecting youth from gangs toward school and activism and have built strong ties between their community in Providence and the countries of their roots. Over time, the need to address homophobia within families and in the macho-gang youth culture became apparent. PrYSM began an integral project, Southeast Asian Queers United for Empowerment and Leadership (seaQuel), to build the leadership skills of queer youth and to begin a cross-cultural and intergenerational dialogue about sexuality in the Southeast Asian community.

Community-building events have become a hallmark of seaQuel (and PrYSM), regularly gathering more than 400 community members from Providence and the New England area, and opening a dialogue about gender and sexuality. seaQuel also transformed the National Day of Silence (when students nationwide protest LGBTQ harassment in their schools) into a culturally relevant event held on the Khmer and Laotian New Year’s celebrations. Through an art exhibition, pamphlets and one-on-one conversations, seaQuel reached more than 1,500 people about the importance of organizing against racism, homophobia and sexism. The group has also built connections to LGBTQ communities in Southeast Asia by producing a solidarity video and holding a fundraiser to support a new LGBTQ organization in Cambodia.

In addition to building links across borders, seaQuel is also building networks across the U.S. In July 2010, seaQuel members traveled from Providence, Rhode Island, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to attend the first-ever Queer Southeast Asian Conference. Along the way, they stopped in Chicago to visit a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Cambodian genocide—an important opportunity to process and honor the past. Supported by Astraea, the conference was a groundbreaking collaborative effort of the newly formed Queer Southeast Asian Network, an association of seaQuel and four other organizations that have united to advocate and share strategies. The members, not just the leaders, of all five organizations were involved in planning and facilitating workshop sessions. Over three days, they developed the links necessary for joint national strategies while expanding seaQuel’s Queer Southeast Asian Census, which gathers empirical data on the unique challenges facing their communities.

In the year ahead, seaQuel will continue its work on cultural, educational and policy fronts. To further develop leadership around issues that affect their lives, LGBTQ and straight youth will organize together to pass two groundbreaking pieces of legislation. The first effort ensures that Rhode Island schools and public institutions develop an accurate count of distinct ethnic populations to assess their needs. Second, they will pursue legislation to reduce racial and gang profiling of youth. seaQuel will also launch a political education curriculum, release a report on the findings of its census, and reach thousands more with its public events.

Like so many initiatives at ALP, Safe Outside the System (SOS) grew out of a community need—to curb hate violence in low income, predominantly people of color neighborhoods without relying on the police. SOS set out to create and train a network of businesses that would act as safe spaces and intervene in hate violence. Last year, the 3rd Annual Safe Neighborhood Summit drew 150 people. Chelsea Johnson-Long, who coordinates SOS, went to recruit a business owner struggling to stay open as the neighborhood gentrified: “He was about to refuse, but when I started talking about cases that we’d worked on, it became a conversation about the landscape of the neighborhood and how it had changed. He is a straight black man but also had a really strong understanding of gentrification and how it’s affected local LGBTSTGNC people of color. SOS is about taking knowledge that people already have and turning the stories into responses.”

In 2004 ALP formed TransJustice to respond to TGNC members who were experiencing police harassment, job and housing discrimination, and difficulty accessing welfare resources. Mya Laylani Vazquez, who joined ALP as a member and now coordinates the program, explains,“In TransJustice, we offer guidance to get through whatever issue they’re facing, while also engaging them in organizing.” TransJustice is still one of the only organizing projects by and for TGNC people of color. Its annual Trans March has grown exponentially. In coalition with the Astraea grantee partner Sylvia Rivera Law Project, TransJustice drafted curriculum and conducts TGNC cultural competency trainings for the agency that administers New York’s welfare system.

ALP also needed to find a way to support members in crisis without stopping the flow of campaigns. Whether a lesbian member experienced hate violence outside a club in Brooklyn or a trans woman lost her income after a discriminatory firing, 3rd Space Support was created to respond to needs as they arise. It makes legal counsel, therapy and health resources available to ALP members by recruiting professionals to provide pro-bono services. It holds interpreter trainings for LGBTSTGNC immigrants of color so they can secure translation work. It creates spaces that aren’t available anywhere else.3rd Space Support coordinator Becca Wisotsky said, “When we were developing the program, we held a focus group for queer immigrants of color. When it was over, they stayed for a while and talked.They said, ‘This was the first space where I didn’t have to worry about immigration status, gender identity or sexual orientation, and now I have a lead on a place to look for work.’ It’s powerful.”

Most import to the success of ALP’s programs is the fundamental way that they are linked together, both in the complex experiences and identities of members and in the sharing of strategies and information across issues. “It helps people be better organizers,” explains Co-Director Collette Carter. “For instance, in the TransJustice community school, immigrant rights are covered. In SOS, there are trainings about transphobia. At ALP, you can bring your whole self to the table in the multiple ways your identity can manifest.”

Co-Director Kris Hayashi emphasizes that ALP would not be the organization it is today without Astraea’s support, especially with recent cuts to state budgets. “Astraea has allowed ALP to grow, have vision, and be authentic about meeting our communities’ needs in ways that just haven’t been supported by other funding,” Kris said. Because of this flexibility, “ALP’s work never gets stagnant,” said Chelsea. “Things often start as experiments—you try it out and see how it works—and there’s always room for change and movement.”

“We must listen deeply to our communities, and work for concrete changes that directly impact areas of our lives that are under crisis-level attack…” —Queer and Trans People’s Movement Assembly Resolution

In celebration of interdependence and coalition building, twelve organizations of the Astraea Foundation’s Movement Building Program convened in June 2010 at the US Social Forum. Affirming the vital importance of safe self-determination in community organizing, these groups came together to strengthen their ties to one another. Astraea’s grantee partners share a deep commitment to developing services, public education, and direct action infrastructure that empowers our communities to lead their own movements.

Exemplary of this commitment is the work of SRLP and SPARK. New York City-based SRLP offers free legal services, leadership-building programs, and political education and “Know Your Rights” trainings for low-income transgender and gender non-conforming people of color locally and nationally. SRLP provides critical support and education to its members, addressing disability justice, legal processes for name and gender marker changes, immigration rights, and access to healthcare. SPARK’s LGBTQI-inclusive approach to reproductive justice is similarly founded on leadership-building and political education. Collaborating with individuals and organizations in Atlanta, Georgia, SPARK organizes media training programs, develops action-oriented research and advocacy, and mobilizes responses to immediate legal threats.

The considerable work of these organizations answers to the acute and unmet legal needs of LGBT people. Most importantly, SRLP and SPARK’s approach of self-determination not only invests in the current needs of those accessing their services and education, but also lays the foundation for long-term systemic change. Cultivating the power and access of their communities, these grantees are changing lives present and future.

Suzanne Pharr

Since the 1980s, I have been connected to Astraea through receiving organizational grants, facilitating meetings, being a donor, and most recently, coordinating its flagship program, the Movement Building Initiative which builds capacity and strategies of LGBTI people of color organizations.  What an honor and a wonderful ride over the years.  Why am I now involved in the Fall Campaign Drive, you might ask?  Because this tough, thoughtful foundation is where my belief in justice—economic, racial, gender, disability, reproductive—is reflected, and social justice is still seen through the lens of the best of lesbian feminism as put forth in the Combahee River Collective statement in the 1970s.  That is, Astraea sees people and their issues as connected and of equal worth, interdependent upon each other both for survival and well being in mind, body and spirit. And now my commitment is fueled with the excitement of a new leader, the highly charged, new-media-savvy, bold new-school lesbian-feminist, J. Bob Alotta.  Astraea is stepping solidly into real time:  intergenerational, multi-gendered, multi-racial, transnational, technological, multi-issued—and remains grounded in those small organizations world-wide that are the legs of the liberation movements.  I’’m there.

Theo Yang Copley

As a long time donor, I am passionate not only about the grassroots organizing that Astraea has traditionally funded, but also about the foresight and vision of the U. S. Movement-Building Initiative (MBI). Through MBI, Astraea has the opportunity and the privilege to not only continue to develop new models of funding that reflect progressive values, but also to use our deep and wide legacy to fund, convene and encourage collaboration among social justice organizations that are equipped with the capacity to target social and economic injustices that particularly affect LGBTQI people of color. I am proud to be a part of the next generation of Astraea donors and hope that many others will join me in committing support to Astraea’s vision to make the world a better place for all of us.

Todd Lester

In 2007 I met a group of Astraea grantee partners in Dublin, Ireland at a meeting of frontline activists. I was living in Cairo, Egypt and working in the Middle East, where I personally witnessed the work of these grantees—from Aswat, a Palestinian Lesbian Women’s organization, to a network of women from diverse backgrounds meeting in private homes around Cairo. Now back in New York, I have followed as some of those same activists played integral roles in the revolutions that have shaken decades-old patriarchal regimes to their cores. After years working in the humanitarian field, and seeing some of the world’s conflict zones firsthand, I am convinced that working from a feminist perspective – where the safety of all family members and the primacy of education are prioritized over land and resource acquisition – is the way to go. Similarly I’m convinced that Astraea – especially at this unique moment of new leadership – is the organization that can uplift and amplify so many LGBTI-led humanitarian and community initiatives around the world using a tried and tested roadmap. That’s why I’ve joined the team to create the resources for the next phase of Astraea’s important work.

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Just under one hundred attendees came to hear the work of R. Erica Doyle, Karma Mayet Johnson, Ana-Maurine Lara, Chinelo Okparanta, Kirya Traber and Lenelle Moïse.  A touching multimedia tribute to poet and activist Cheryl B also filled the room with memory.  Finally, Writeous! became a celebration in the liveliest sense as the crowd moved their chairs to the side and danced to the music of Cocomama and DJ RiMarkable.