2022 Capacity-Strengthening Grants for
Immigrant-Focused CBOs
Cohort A

The LA County Office of Immigrant Affairs (OIA) grant program is funded by the County of Los Angeles, allocated from American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds, and administered by the Center for Nonprofit Management (CNM). This grant program intends to provide direct investments to immigrant-focused Community-Based Organizations (CBOs).  

The first cohort of ten organizations will receive $150,000 and capacity-strengthening skill-building and training over two years. The organizations will use the funding on operational activities that strengthen an organization’s capacity to provide effective, culturally, and linguistically responsive services to immigrants during the pandemic and beyond.   

We are honored to share the first cohort for 2022 Capacity-Strengthening Grants for Immigrant-Focused CBOs (listed alphabetically):  

• Al Otro Lado (AOL) provides holistic legal and humanitarian support to refugees, deportees, and other migrants throughout Los Angeles County. This grant helps AOL expand and restructure case management services by hiring a social worker to focus on LGBTQ+, disabled, indigent, Kreyol-speaking, Indigenous-language-speaking, and Spanish-speaking individuals, among other marginalized communities. 
• The California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative works to achieve a healthier, more sustainable, and just industry by improving the health, safety, and rights of the nail and beauty care workforce. Through this grant, the Collaborative will design communication strategies that reaffirm their strategic focus on racial justice and equity, Black/Asian solidarity, labor and employment rights, and securing a just economic recovery for the immigrant workforce. 
• The Community Lawyers, Inc. (CLI) pro-bono model leverages the talents of volunteer legal professionals and students to ensure low-income individuals and families have access to quality, culturally informed legal services regardless of immigration status. This grant will increase temporary program staffing so that CLI leadership can engage in tailored technical assistance around long-term strategic visioning, planning, and fundraising.  
• Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (CIELO) is an indigenous women-led organization that works with indigenous-migrant communities in Los Angeles. CIELO’s advocacy approach empowers indigenous interpreters to provide Indigenous language interpretation in hospitals, courtrooms, and other spaces where service providers can be educated about the linguistic need and migration patterns of Indigenous people. This grant will support CIELO in strengthening its leadership and infrastructure to attend to language justice needs and fight against the invisibility of indigenous people and the resulting language violence. 
• Filipino Migrant Center (FMC) educates, organizes, and mobilizes low-income and working-class Filipino families. With this grant, FMC will hire a bilingual Communications Coordinator and a bilingual Community Organizer to develop health education programs for low-income and working-class Filipino families in LA County.  
• Korean American Coalition (KAC) integrates Korean immigrants into American society, engaging them in civic life, building interethnic understanding and collaboration, and developing leadership among youth and young adults. This grant will support KAC’s fight against Asian hate, the provision of bilingual and culturally appropriate alternative dispute resolution, ongoing COVID-19 in-language outreach, leadership development for Korean American youth, and civic engagement campaigns.  
• The Latino/Latina Roundtable is a justice-oriented organization that advocates and works alongside immigrant communities around immigrant rights, education, and economic development. With this grant, the Latino/Latina Roundtable will launch a pilot immigration program with temporary staff to coordinate immigration services and create programming and content to address the immediate needs of the immigrant community. 
• The Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander (NHPI) Alliance is a primarily volunteer-run community-based organization that improves and increases access to critical resources, citizenship and immigration clinics, translation services, and other direct services. This grant will enable the Alliance to develop specific operations-level programs, personnel, fund development, and volunteer management plans and support the Alliance in expanding their citizenship and immigration clinics.   
• The Refugee Children Center provides a healing embrace and a dignified welcome to migrant children seeking refuge in the United States, primarily from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Through this grant, the Refugee Children Center will support families unable to secure pro bono or low-bono representation in filing applications for asylum or withholding removal and employment authorization document forms, thus increasing participants’ chances of securing legal representation. 
• Saahas for Cause is a woman-run organization that educates, empowers, and enables the South Asian (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives) immigrant communities in LA County to improve their quality of life. This grant will be used to improve, configure, and train staff in data collection and management as well as strengthen the capacity of the Board of Directors, especially around roles and responsibilities and data-driven decision-making.