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Monthly Archives: July 2018

July 2018

Cambridge Legal Defense Fund for Immigrants

2018-10-15T16:48:07+00:00July 27th, 2018|Civic Leadership, Press Release, Shared Prosperity|

Cambridge Legal Defense Fund for Immigrants DONATE The Need The Fund The Dollars The People To Give What You Can Do How Cambridge and Massachusetts Can Help Local Nonprofits The Need Many immigrant families, children and workers in our community are caught up in a humanitarian crisis that could tear families apart, deport DREAMers from the only home they have ever known, and expose asylum seekers to the persecution and abuse they faced in their home countries. Help us help our most vulnerable neighbors with a tax-deductible contribution to the Cambridge Legal Defense Fund for Immigrants. One in four immigrants in America are undocumented. Pew Research Center data states 210,000 undocumented residents in Massachusetts, of which over 180,000 are in Cambridge, Boston and surrounding communities.  In Massachusetts, there are approximately 19,000 students eligible for DACA status, over 12,000 are workers with Temporary Protective Status, thousands more are Asylum Seekers. While there is no city-specific data on the numbers of undocumented immigrants in our community, proxy data for Cambridge shows 27% of the population is foreign born; 40% of children have at least one foreign born parent; and approximately 25% of high [...]

Nonprofit Spotlight: Cambridge Camping Association

2018-09-05T14:31:09+00:00July 25th, 2018|Press Release|

Nonprofit Spotlight Cambridge Camping Association Enters its 125th Year Providing Camp Experiences to Local Youth By Elie Levine Cambridge Community Foundation Intern Cambridge Community Foundation is pleased to partner with nonprofits that support an equitable, socially just and culturally rich city. Cambridge Camping Association (CCA) is one such organization. This year, CCA is celebrating its 125th year of giving under-resourced urban kids a camp experience. According to Executive Director Sharon Zimmerman, the organization has been sending kids to camp for longer than women’s suffrage and the Ford Model T have been in existence. “Camp is where children play, learn, build confidence and make friends for a lifetime,” Sharon says. “All children deserve the opportunity to experience the magic of camp.” Such continuity and dedication to Cambridge through the decades is impressive, and those who have stayed with Cambridge Camping over time stay committed to the organization’s growth. Taylor Cole started camp at 9 years old and grew up attending camp each year, rising up in the ranks from junior counselor to CIT. Now, at the age of 25, she serves as the assistant director of Cambridge Adventure Day Camp and just completed her master’s in social work from Boston [...]

Nonprofit Spotlight: CommonWealth Kitchen

2018-07-27T15:54:11+00:00July 20th, 2018|Press Release|

Nonprofit Spotlight Inside CommonWealth Kitchen: Q&A with Executive Director Jen Faigel By Elie Levine Cambridge Community Foundation Intern As home to the most innovative square mile on the planet, we Cantabrigians know all about incubation, but in our city the term isn’t restricted to the tech industry.  Think food. Jen Faigel, co-founder and Executive Director of CommonWealth Kitchen, is making big strides in food-biz innovation through Greater Boston’s first shared kitchen and business incubator space. CommonWealth Kitchen has helped launch more than 200 food companies, the majority of which are owned by women, minorities, low income residents and immigrants.  This year, the Cambridge Community Foundation gave seed money to CommonWealth Kitchen to help create a new lunch-time retail business incubation space in Kendall Square. We caught up with Jen at the opening of The Dining Car on Athenaeum Street to learn more about incubating food startups in Cambridge and the impact on business owners and our community.  Here’s what we learned: What does CommonWealth Kitchen do and what’s the impact locally? We are not only Greater Boston’s food and business incubator and food manufacturing enterprise, we are also an economic development organization focused on asset building and wealth creation [...]

Falcon Pride Scholarships for Four CRLS Seniors

2021-04-22T16:48:53+00:00July 20th, 2018|Press Release|

Four graduating seniors were awarded the 2018 Falcon Pride Scholarships by Andus Baker and Kim Green Goldstein at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School’s Scholarship Evening on May 17th, 2018. This year’s cohort included Kelsey Jajoute, Vanessa Marques Pineda, Lisa Mekonnen, and Bryanna Rodriguez. They are every bit as inspiring and full of promise as the first group of scholarship recipients last year. Awarding the scholarships stands as a high point of the year for the Foundation, which is seeding the Falcon Pride Scholarship Fund; for our Falcon Pride Scholarship donors; and for the students an affirmation of their achievements as students. The students are brimming with excitement about their futures, and they are thrilled to have these two-year scholarships demonstrating the Cambridge community’s commitment to their success. For our donors, it is a way to address the opportunity disparity students feel as they move from high school to post-secondary education with scholarship support that makes education accessible and helps to put completion within grasp. To date, we have committed funding to eight CRLS seniors, four of whom are now in college. The Falcon Pride Scholarship Fund has secured over $300,000 since its founding in 2017, and we are [...]

Lives in Limbo: Immigration as a Human Rights Issue

2018-07-13T18:42:36+00:00July 6th, 2018|Civic Leadership, Press Release|

Lives in Limbo: Experts Discuss Immigration Policies and their Impact By Jeffrey Blackwell Cambridge Community Foundation Correspondent The face of an asylum-seeker is a 28-year-old Honduran woman, who was beaten and raped from age 16, pushed off a 25-foot cliff into a raging river, and left to die by her abuser. It is the face of a mother from El Salvador escaping the violence of the country with her five-year-old child in tow, following the murder of her 14-year-old son at the hands of a local gang. It is also the face of a Ugandan woman who fled her country after being raped and beaten by a domestic abuser, and then again by the police she ran to for safety. Mojdeh Rohani, the executive director of the Community Legal Service Center in Cambridge, said these are the typical stories of refugees they see every day seeking counseling for a lifetime filled with the trauma that did not end when they reached the United States border seeking safety, help, and asylum. “These are the voices and this is very real,” said Rohani, whose agency provides free legal, and affordable counseling services for low-income residents and immigrants. “It is not like [...]

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