WE DID IT!

On July 22, 2021, 20 members were able to join together for our first-ever grant recipient vote! With 56 members total joining us in our first year, we were able to collectively pool almost $16,000 to grant to an Albuquerque area organization that works to improve the lives of women and children in our community. Out of a total of six organizations that applied, the grants committee presented the top four whose applications best met the AWGC mission.  During our meeting, we voted on whether to donate the funds to one or two organizations and then ranked our first two choices.
 
The Albuquerque Women’s Giving Circle is proud to present Crossroads for Women and Enlace Comunitario as our inaugural grant recipients! Below is the information we received from these organizations including how they will be using the grant funds. In the coming months, we will check back in with both Crossroads for Women and Enlace Comunitario for updates, and hopefully photos, to see how our funds have impacted their goals and women and children in our community.

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A huge thank you to our grants committee members that reviewed all the applicants, spent several hours deciding on our finalists, putting together the presentation, and figuring out the voting process.

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As we close out our first year, we will be having committee meetings to discuss what worked well this year and how we can improve our processes. If you are interested, please join us! We would love for the AWGC to not only be centered around collective giving, but also collective action. Dates and times to come! 

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Finally, thank you to all of YOU! We have exceeded all of our goals this year - from membership numbers to funds raised and by the number of applicants. Even better? Our success is truly OUR success. The AWGC only works when we work together so thank you so much for joining us and believing in our mission and our community! 

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With Gratitude,
AWGC

 
Crossroads for Women
robertfontenot@crossroadsabq.org
239 Elm Street NE, Albuquerque, NM 87102
Contact: Robert Fontenot

Mission
The mission of Crossroads for Women is to provide comprehensive, integrated services to empower women emerging from incarceration to achieve safe, healthy, and fulfilling lives in the community, for themselves and their children.

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Population
CRFW provides housing and trauma-responsive, gender-specific, wrap-around services to women with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse diagnoses who have cycled between incarceration and homelessness. All of the women we serve fall below the federal poverty level. 

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Important Accomplishments
In reflecting back over the many obstacles over the last couple of years, Covid-19 presented the greatest challenge to the organization, its staff, and namely, the clients we serve. For an organization like CRFW that has spent over two decades building community as a way to support women in recovery, the social isolation created by the pandemic dealt a devastating blow to the way we support clients. However, despite working in a vastly different environment, CRFW quickly adapted its approach and rose to the occasion for the women enrolled in our program. We felt very strongly that clients still needed a way to engage each other, and it was imperative that clients stay in frequent contact with their case managers. To accomplish this, CRFW immediately moved one-on-one and group meetings to a virtual format. CRFW also worked with clients to ensure they had a stable broadband connection and the technology needed to access these meetings whether cell phone or a computer. Throughout 2020 and in the first quarter of 2021, CRFW has supported hundreds of clients through virtual engagement and has also provided food boxes, diapers, cleaning supplies, and incentives to homes to ensure client needs were met. 

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In addition to the dedication displayed by staff during Covid-19, CRFW made a pivotal step forward in the future of the organization by purchasing a new facility in Downtown Albuquerque. As CRFW has expanded in staff size and the services offered, we quickly outgrew our previous home. The new building, known as Crossroads Village will be the hub of the organization, housing the majority of staff as well as one of the two therapeutic communities under the CRFW umbrella. With space to grow, CRFW will continue to increase the number of women it serves and will now be able to ensure the children of clients have a safe space to play and learn while their parents receive recovery support. 

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Purpose of Grant
Crossroads for Women’s new home, Crossroads Village, provides so much promise for the growth of the organization and the women who will enter our doors in the years to come. As CRFW searched for a new facility, we were mindful of programs within the organization that could benefit from a new location, and a key area of focus has been the future of the Family Program. Many of the women who enroll in CRFW have children who have been impacted by their parent’s incarceration or by the challenges associated with substance abuse or mental illness. As a part of the wraparound services provided by CRFW, the Family Program aims at addressing clients’ needs associated with family reunification, increasing family stability, and building healthy relationships between parent and child.

One of the areas CRFW is focused on expanding within the Family Program is the incorporation of services tailored more specifically toward children. In the envisioned space, children will have a dedicated outdoor area and media center where they can play while their parents attend sessions with the Family Specialist. Older children will have to access a tutoring center equipped with computers and high-speed internet to complete classwork and receive support from volunteer tutors. Clients oftentimes cite the challenge of finding childcare in order to attend group and one-on-one sessions with their case managers, so the new Family Program will have a room tailored for children five and under so clients with children who are not yet school-aged, can more regularly access services crucial to their recovery. Lastly, CRFW, will begin to provide direct services to children in the form of family counseling, where both parent and child can meet with a specialist to discuss and work through issues. 

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In order to create these spaces, the Family Wing of Crossroads Village must undergo some construction and put in place some safety measures to ensure children are in a protected environment. The construction requirements are quite small, a list of the needed changes can found below:

Removal of a built-in nurses station to make way for a tutoring and homework center.

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Addition of a door from the Family Specialist’s office to the outdoor play area. 

The exchange of the adult-sized toilet and sink for child-sized facilities in the children’s room.

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In addition to physical changes to the space, CRFW will need to purchase several items to complete the Family Wing. The media center for the older children will need a gaming system and TV. Finally, the outdoor play area needs to be childproof with rubber playground safety tiles. A budget for all of these items can be found attached to the grant application. 

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The completion of the project will have big implications for the women in Albuquerque who access our services. Ensuring that parents have a safe and enriching place for their children to learn and play while they engage with the program will increase the frequency at which they attend meetings. Children will benefit because they will have access to technology, tutors, and play environments that foster positive habits. And clients will finally have an opportunity to attend sessions with their children to help rebuild those relationships that have been strained by addiction, mental illness, and incarceration. Strengthening the family bond increases the chances for client recovery, and provides the best path of success for the child as well. 

Enlace Comunitario
mmirarchi@enlacenm.org
2425 Alamo Ave SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
www.enlacenm.org
Contact: Sara Y. "Bonnie" Escobar
Matt Mirarchi, Director of Grants Development & Compliance

Mission
Enlace Comunitario (EC) transforms the lives of individuals and their families experiencing domestic violence (DV) by working to decrease gender inequity and intimate partner violence in the Latinx immigrant community in Central New Mexico.

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We operationalize our mission through providing transformative direct services, leadership development, preventative community education, outreach, and policy advocacy—in close collaboration with our network of community partners. In so doing, we work to bring EC’s organizational vision to fruition—wherein Latinx immigrants in New Mexico become a collective force that creates a community free of gender inequity, violence, and injustice.

Population
EC’s integrated services suite addresses DV through two programmatic arms: prevention and intervention. Our programs improve maternal and child health; prevent abuse or maltreatment; reduce DV; enhance family economic solvency; and foment inter-organization collaboration to equip at-risk families with the resources they need to thrive. 

Intervention services involve supporting and connecting DV survivors with housing, legal, and social services resources. From intake to case management, our staff is client directed and tailors a trauma-informed approach to each survivor’s needs. 

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Prevention services operate at the community and household levels—to inculcate equitable, gender-affirming praxis among parents, youth, and their extended community; doing so mitigates the likelihood of DV-affiliated behaviors being expressed by parents and replicated by affected children. 

EC’s trauma-informed methodology informs how our DV intervention and prevention staff provides free, culturally and linguistically appropriate services to immigrant DV survivors — 95% of whom are low- or limited-income Latinx, Spanish-speaking womxn and their dependent children living in Bernalillo, Sandoval, and Valencia Counties. Despite the fact that 53% of DV service recipients in our state are Hispanic, EC is the only culturally specific DV service provider for New Mexico’s Latinx immigrant community; while the majority of EC’s clients are undocumented and identify as Latinx, EC’s services are available to anyone in need.

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EC’s primary tri-county footprint encompasses 43% (902,325 residents) of New Mexico’s total population and includes a mix of urban and rural areas. EC is headquartered in Bernalillo County and most of our clients reside there; however, we continue to experience increased service requests in Sandoval and Valencia Counties. 

Important Accomplishments
COVID-19 and its concomitant economic and health crises have made barriers to exiting a DV situation even more difficult for survivors to overcome, especially as health and wellness concerns intersect with immigration status. Since the onset of the pandemic, our client communities have requested increased support through EC’s services suite. In Q1 of 2021 alone, EC’s case managers and counselors have experienced a punctuated uptick in service requests—with reports and severity of DV increasing; household health and economic strains from the pandemic are frequently cited as contributing factors exacerbating tension. 

In order to help DV survivors clear many of these COVID-emplaced hurdles to employment, technology, medical care, and legal services, EC has diversified our community engagement methods to include remotely conveyed direct support (e.g., via phone and virtual meetings). We also are working to accommodate survivors with children who are managing remote schooling requirements. Due to spread prevention protocols, we are limiting in-person meetings, but do provide limited engagement within the context of family counseling—when adequate spatial requirements can be met within EC’s facilities.

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EC's ability to respond to the increasing needs of our client community while pivoting to diversify our engagement methods are, collectively, one highlight. In addition to growing our services to reach more clients during COVID-19's protracted tenure, EC also continues to train, employ, and deploy our cohorts of Promotoras--former clients who have trained as community health advocates; their contributions, as well as those of our Youth Leaders (former child witnesses to DV, who also were treated previously as clients) continue to empower our client communities and bring our service model full circle.

Purpose of Grant
Enlace Comunitario (EC) respectfully requests $15,000 in support of our Creative Resources for Immigrant Survivors’ Independence and Success project (CRISIS); this project and is projected to provide one-time emergency assistance to 300 low-income Latinx immigrant survivors of domestic violence (DV) and their families (approximately 800 individuals total) in Central New Mexico, with specific project sites in Albuquerque’s South Valley and Westgate communities.  

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CRISIS provides EC clients with one-time situational support to overcome a crisis; this includes financial support specific to survivors transitioning into safe housing and replacing needed items as they increase their autonomy from their abuser and become self-sufficient. CRISIS assistance includes support with moving expenses; rental and/or deposit assistance; and basic household item procurement (e.g., beds, cooking utensils, clothing, and pantry staples). EC conveys all CRISIS-related financial support directly to vendors (e.g., utility providers), on behalf of the client; EC prohibits direct payments to individual clients or families. 

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CRISIS project outcomes include: 
1. Stabilizing families by securing vital resources (e.g., housing or basic household items) to support survivors’ health and wellbeing; 
2. Shaping a household environment wherein survivors are able to process their DV-related trauma and heal; and 
3. Supporting survivors’ vital first acts in overcoming a DV crisis to become autonomous and self-sufficient.

All CRISIS client recipients are already in the process of making positive life changes (e.g., exiting their DV situation and identifying housing), but need supplemental, one-time assistance to bridge a crisis—to continue on their path toward self-sufficiency. Moreover, as they meet their personal goals, many of our CRISIS clients become Promotoras—and, through subsequent training, become community-level advocates catalyzing DV-mitigation activities in Albuquerque’s South Valley and Westgate communities, as part of EC’s place-based Intimate Partner Violence Prevention Collective (IPVPC) strategy. 

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In this way, low-income Latinx womxn leverage CRISIS assistance as a vital conduit through which they can exit their DV situation safely; reestablish themselves and their family in safe housing; architect a new life chapter predicated upon self-sufficiency; and become self-sufficient change agents improving their longitudinal health and wellbeing, as well as that of their children and their larger communities.