Transform New Orleans Fund
The 18 organizations supported by the Transform New Orleans Fund fall into four broad categories: ensuring government transparency and accountability, bolstering New Orleans' rich arts and culture as a vehicle for progressive social change, securing a fair and effective criminal justice system, and engaging diverse communities in New Orleans' rebirth. They are small, local organizations that struggle for the funds they need to continue having a profound impact.
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Ensuring government transparency and accountability
Committee for a Better New Orleans
A member of the New Orleans Coalition on Open Governance, CBNO works as a catalyst and convener to bring the full spectrum of voices to the table in efforts to solve New Orleans' most pressing problems. The organization's membership and leadership is representative of race, age, and class diversity in the city. Over the years CBNO has worked on public education, city management, economic development, housing, public safety, and transportation. Most recently, CBNO's Community Participation Project has been spearheading efforts to create a permanent set of structures and processes to allow greater community input and civic engagement in municipal decision-making and policy reform.
Louisiana Budget Project
LBP, an initiative of the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations (LANO), monitors and reports on state government spending and how it affects Louisiana's low- to moderate-income families (particularly on the Gulf Coast). LBP presses for state revenue increases that hold the government accountable for rebuilding post-Katrina.
Neighborhoods Partnership Network
A member of the New Orleans Coalition on Open Governance, NPN's mission is to improve the quality of life by engaging New Orleanians in neighborhood revitalization and civic processes. To achieve that mission, NPN organizes and coordinates a citywide network of neighborhood associations that facilitates inter-neighborhood collaboration, increases access to government and information, and strengthens the voices of individuals and communities across New Orleans.
Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana
A member of the New Orleans Coalition on Open Governance, the PAR is a nonprofit, non-partisan public policy research organization. Founded in 1950 and based in Baton Rouge, PAR aims to pave the way to a more efficient, effective, transparent, and accountable Louisiana government. PAR's mission is to offer solutions to critical public issues in Louisiana through accurate, objective research and focus public attention on those solutions. PAR has received many national awards for its distinguished research and effective citizen education.
Puentes New Orleans
A member of the New Orleans Coalition on Open Governance, Puentes is aimed at empowering Latino families and individuals to become fully integrated participants of the Greater New Orleans area. Since its founding in 2007, Puentes has been at the forefront of organizing against, educating about, and challenging anti-immigrant laws at the Louisiana legislature; initiated an education, training and capacity development program that tackles relations between law enforcement and the Latino community; initiated an eight-month voter registration campaign; and conducted various other educational programs about issues affecting the everyday lives of New Orleans area Latinos.
Tulane Loyola Public Law Center
A member of the New Orleans Coalition on Open Governance, the Public Law Center assists New Orleanians with legislative research and drafting; negotiation and preparation of community benefit agreements; fostering transparency in government, including open meetings and public records reforms; collaborative planning and citizen participation in the land use planning process; support for ethics initiatives, such as the Ethics Review Board and Office of Inspector General; and other similar activities in pursuit of the public interest. (The Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund acts as the fiscal agent for the Public Law Center.)
Using arts and culture to advance social change
Ashe Cultural Arts Center
Ashe Cultural Arts Center emerged in 1998 and has served as a community hub of artistic collaboration, local advocacy and dialogue, economic development, and as an overall centralizing and stabilizing community force in post-Katrina upheaval, distress, and displacement. In addition to hosting community planning meetings, lectures and panels, art exhibits and film screenings, the Center partners with churches and cultural and advocacy organizations in their programming. (Efforts of Grace, Inc., acts as the fiscal agent for the Ashe Cultural Arts Center.)
SilenceIsViolence
SilenceIsViolence is a public safety and advocacy campaign that was founded in 2007 to address community violence occurring in New Orleans neighborhoods in the period following Hurricane Katrina. Its core strategies include the engagement of young people in addressing public safety and criminal justice reform; solidarity-building across diverse New Orleans communities; and intervention within the public school system. The overarching approach is to advance community advocacy around public safety by engaging young people in arts and culture activities that are rooted in local traditions like the Second Line, and to contribute to ongoing recovery and redevelopment efforts at the most local levels, in the neighborhoods that have been most impacted by the disaster and most neglected in the recovery. (The New Orleans Bayou Steppers Social Aid and Pleasure Club acts as the fiscal agent for SilenceIsViolence.)
Sweet Home New Orleans
Sweet Home New Orleans' mission is to support the individuals and organizations that perpetuate New Orleans' unique musical and cultural traditions. The organization assists New Orleans' musicians, Mardi Gras Indians, and Social Aid & Pleasure Club members with establishing sustainable lives in their New Orleans neighborhoods, and it has become an artistic force behind the city's revitalization.
Securing a fair and effective criminal justice system
Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children
Based in New Orleans, FFLIC is a state-wide, membership-based organization dedicated to improving the lives of Louisiana's youth, especially those involved, or at risk of becoming involved, in the justice system. FFLIC engages in public education, community building, and leadership development, to empower individuals, families, and communities to reform the juvenile justice and educational systems to uphold equity and justice for Louisiana's children and families. The majority of FFLIC's membership is African American, and almost all of its members are low-income families. More than 95 percent of FFLIC members are women, particularly mothers and grandmothers. In New Orleans, FFLIC organizes parents of students in public schools to implement school disciplinary practices that reduce the number of students who are expelled from the Recovery School District.
Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana
JJPL is a New Orleans-based advocacy organization that aims to reform Louisiana's broken juvenile justice system into one that builds on the strengths of young people, families, and communities to ensure that children have opportunities to thrive. JJPL seeks to reduce the number of youth incarcerated; improve conditions of confinement in youth detention centers; increase support for evidence-based alternatives to incarceration; ensure that all children have access to effective counsel at all stages in the court process; reduce the number of school suspensions and expulsions; end the practice of transferring youth to the adult criminal justice system; and protect the rights of incarcerated LGBT youth and youth living with HIV/AIDS in secure care facilities.
Juvenile Regional Services
Formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, JRS, the only stand-alone, full-time juvenile public defender office in the country, represents all indigent youth in Orleans Parish in delinquency and Family In Need of Services cases. JRS represented detained youth who were stranded after Katrina and continues helping youth and their families navigate the collapsed post-Katrina legal system. Following a holistic approach to defending children in delinquency proceedings, JRS provides other services for children, including social work, employment referrals, and service referrals.
Orleans Public Defenders
OPD is an independent legal office with the responsibility of representing all indigent defendants accused of committing crimes in Orleans Parish. More than 90 percent of defendants accused of crimes in Orleans Parish are indigent. Hurricane Katrina eliminated OPD's primary source of funding—traffic tickets—culminating in the dismissal of almost the entire staff. Over the last five years, OPD has rebuilt itself into a professional law practice committed to quality representation of indigent defendants.
VOTE
VOTE is a grassroots, membership-based organization in New Orleans dedicated to ending the disenfranchisement of and discrimination against formerly incarcerated people. Through voter mobilization, legal education, leadership development, and expungement clinics, VOTE builds the political power of people most impacted by the criminal justice system. Most recently, VOTE's Census Outreach Team has been going door-to-door en ensure that communities with low return rates, including communities destroyed by the floodwater of Hurricane Katrina, are represented in the Census. (Innocence Project New Orleans acts as the fiscal agent for VOTE.)
Engaging communities in the New Orleans rebirth
Bayou Interfaith Shared Community Organizing
BISCO's mission is to build a powerful, multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-issue organization that serves as a voice for all people in its communities of Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes in southeastern Louisiana. BISCO is committed to using faith-based community organizing to empower residents to effect positive change related to social justice issues such as poverty, illiteracy, and racism, and to recovery issues including housing, employment, infrastructure, and environmental hazards. The organization's work addresses the massive humanitarian, economic, environmental, cultural and social impacts facing these communities as a result of devastating man-made coastal land loss in the region.
Mary Queen of Vietnam
MQVN Community Development Corporation (MQVN CDC) was established by community leaders of the Mary Queen of Viet Nam Church in May 2006 to assist Vietnamese-Americans in New Orleans East rebuild their lives and their community. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, MQVN CDC played a leading role in providing emergency relief assistance as well as organizing Vietnamese-American residents to participate actively in rebuilding the community surrounding the New Orleans East area. Together with community partners, the organization's work encompasses health care, environmental and agricultural concerns, education, housing, social services, economic development, and culture and the arts.
Moving Forward Gulf Coast
Moving Forward Gulf Coast, Inc., is a community-based initiative committed to restorative justice for residents of the Gulf Coast region. Since the beginning of its work in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, its community-based staff has worked throughout Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana to bring information, strategy solutions, and new media to address blatant attacks on human dignity. Moving Forward Gulf Coast operates at the intersection of new media, community organizing and training, policy strategy, and legal service provision. Through a regional frame and a multi-pronged approach, the organization works toward achieving the long-term goal of rebuilding and restoring the Gulf Coast. (Project South acts as the fiscal agent for Moving Forward Gulf Coast.)
New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice
The New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice is dedicated to organizing workers in the Gulf region across race and industry to build the grassroots leadership and civic participation of workers and communities in the Gulf region. Founded in August 2006 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Center has grown into a constituency organization with 10 staff and close to 4,000 workers and residents from immigrant and African American communities who are the driving force behind the Center's campaigns at local, state, and national levels. (The National Immigration Law Center acts as the fiscal agent for New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice.)
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