Freedonia Grants for 2009

Freedonia has completed its third funding round and is pleased to announce its 2009 list of grantees. The following organizations have received funding from Freedonia in the 2009 Funding Round:

Freedonia provided a grant to Jane-Finch On the Move to build on its Political Awareness Accountability Project by maintaining contact with previous participants, reviewing discussions from the three community forums already held, identifying relevant issues to serve as focal points for the campaign and incorporating these focal points into outreach materials, activities and actions.

Temiskaming Native Women's Support Group received support from Freedonia to develop a community garden and provide access to individuals and organizations to participate in planting and harvesting fresh produce and develop programs for the daycare and community with teachings about the garden.

Freedonia is supporting the Olympic Resistance Network - Education Sub Committee to develop a workshop with youth about the history, legacy and negative impacts of the Olympic games, create a zine for highschool and university students and host workshops and support mobilizing with youth around the Olympics.

With support from Freedonia, Caregivers Support Services is carrying out an education and advoacy project with live-in caregivers providing information sessions and supporting caregivers to mobilize for accessibility to services and changes in legislation.

Secwepemc Nation Youth Network will travel to 17 of the Secwepemc bands within the Secwepemc Nation and visit house-to-house to expand grassroots organizing and produce an in-depth publication written by Native People for Native People about the Indigenous land struggle, as well as put together a larger database and network of Secwepemc Peoples interested in building and organizing for Secwepemc Lands and Freedom.

Students for Medicare will conduct a "field trip" to Ithaca, NY to visit the Ithaca health Alliance to observe clinic structure and constituency and organize a Toronto panel for various health community service providers to highlight best practice guidelines in servicing low-income communities and those without status or insurance.

Freedonia provided a grant to 4th Annual Victoria Anarchist Bookfair and Festival of Anarchy to support media outreach and promotion as well as assist organizers in arranging workshops, accommodation and transportation for the event.

Freedonia is supporting National Farmers Union Youth to organize an exchange between active youth members of the National Farmers Union with local Kingston area farmers who are engaged in alternative food and farming practices, conduct on-farm training sessions and a visit to the Kingston Farmers Market, support youth to develop a presentation based on their experiences and establish a working group to plan the agenda and logistics for upcoming national conferences.

Freedonia supported Secwepemc Radio to provide training to four aboriginal young adults in community journalism and support these youth to produce a radio piece. Freedonia’s grant will also provide assistance for necessary tools and travel expenses for this project

Freedonia is supporting the South Asian Women’s Rights Organization’s to work with a group of women childcare workers in the Teesdale Place/Crescent Town area of Toronto toward the establishment of a neighborhood daycare centre and childcare workers’ co-operative aimed at providing employment and making affordable and culturally sensitive childcare available in the neighborhood. The project includes carrying out a community needs assessment and mobilizing support in the community.

The F Word Collective will develop a workshop that will apply feminist, anti-oppressive analysis to media that is relevant to youth, and present the workshop in high schools and youth organizations in the community.

Freedonia provided a grant to Migrante Ontario to outreach to live-in caregivers and organize workshops on a variety of topics, as well as organizing leadership building activities with caregivers.

Freedonia is supporting a project called Newly Organized Collective Opposed to Police in Schools that will carry out grassroots outreach at high schools, door to door outreach to low income neighbourhoods and public forums to address issues of police in communities and in schools. The project aims to create an autonomous student organizing body.

Freedonia is supporting No One Is Illegal – Toronto to organize 'City is a Sweatshop', a week of speeches, panels, performances and actions that aim to highlight the violence faced by undocumented people, migrants of color, poor and low-waged workers and queer refugee claimants in Toronto. No One Is Illegal – Toronto will also organize follow-up events and activities, including a Migrant Justice Organizing School.

Freedonia supported the Under the Volcano Festival of Art and Social Change with a grant to present diverse panel discussions during the 19th Annual Under the Volcano Festival.

Workers’ Action Centre in Toronto received a grant from Freedonia to work with members to collectively develop creative strategies linked to the "Ontario Workers Need a Fair Deal" campaign and undertake a range of actions, including delegation visits, actions to highlight unfair working conditions or violations within a sector, and provision of skills training;

Thank you to everyone who applied in the 2008 funding round. Unfortunately there were many more deserving applicants whom we were unable to fund due to limited financial resources.

Freedonia Grants for 2008

October 26, 2008

Freedonia has completed its second funding round and is pleased to announce its 2008 list of grantees. The following organizations have received funding from Freedonia in the 2008 Funding Round:

The Alliance for Peoples’ Health is organizing five “Community Diagnosis” workshops within poor and working class communities in Vancouver. Based on the key health issues that emerge in the first phase, the organizers will hold five more participatory popular-education workshops entitled “the People’s Health Series” to stimulate action on the identified issues. The process will be documented and analyzed with participants and the results will be launched publicly in the community.

Basics Free Community Newsletter is more than just a bi-monthly publication distributed door-to-door in the Lawrence Heights neighbourhood. With Freedonia’s help, Basics has also hired a part-time community organizer to help build community organizing efforts in the neighbourhood.

The Camas Collective Books and Infoshop is undergoing renovations to increase accessibility. Freedonia’s grant is also removing less visible barriers by subsidizing transportation, providing translation at events, and subsidizing the use of the space and its resources by local community organizations.

The Community Friends have undertaken solidarity work with the aboriginal community of Six Nations by preparing a documentary on the land rights struggle and organizing showings in nearby non-Native communities, organizing a weekend conference of solidarity activists at Six Nations, and a series of anti-racist workshops for local people in the area.

Dragonfly Farm turned 30 this year with a conference on the weekend of August 22-24. The conference explored the successes and challenges of the back-to-the-land movement and building of rural intentional communities.

Jane-Finch On the Move is holding at least three community forums where Jane-Finch residents can discuss new and progressive strategies to address community issues. The group will carry out actions based on what is decided at these forums, and conduct door-to-door outreach to engage residents in the process.

Muslim Women Against Violence will host an action retreat for Muslim women in the GTA, hold monthly meetings for young Muslim women and organize violence prevention gatherings at mosques and community centres in the area specifically on the issues of violence against women and Islamophobia.

The No Gold for Water Campaign aims to organize the El Salvadorean community living in Canada to develop a pool of activists that can challenge the impacts of gold mining and the practices of Canadian mining companies operating in El Salvador.

On May 5, 2008, Freedonia supported the National Day of Action for Status for All, a rally and community fair organized by No One Is Illegal – Toronto to highlight the fight for rights for non-status people in Canada.

Arts in Action runs the Purple Thistle Centre, a new-school youth centre located in East Vancouver equidistant between three low-income neighbourhoods. With Freedonia’s help, they are able to offer two employment and lifeskills programs during the day, as well as a wide variety of classes, lectures, trips and projects. The Centre houses a computer lab, darkroom, bike repair shop, library, sewing area, etc. They host meetings and workshops for a wide variety of community organizations.

Vancouver’s Redzone Collective is developing skills-sharing workshops, collaborative arts projects and community building projects to further the use of traditional Coast Salish cultural practices amongst urban First Nations people.

Freedonia is supporting the South Asian Women’s Rights Organization’s “Women’s Summer Workshop Series”, a community organizing effort that uses participatory education to develop leadership by South Asian women in the Toronto area.

This year’s Under the Volcano Festival of Art and Social Change was supported by a grant from Freedonia that enabled them to do community outreach and include workshops for participants on a variety of social change themes.

Film screenings, media outreach and promotion of the 3rd Annual Victoria Anarchist Bookfair and Festival of Anarchy were supported by a grant from Freedonia that also assisted the organizers in arranging workshops, accommodation and transportation for the event.

Toronto’s Workers’ Action Centre develops collective strategies to challenge unfair labour practices and develop worker leadership amongst some of the region’s most vulnerable workers. Freedonia is proud to support the Centre’s grassroots direct action approach including group visits to bad bosses, pickets, phone blitzes, outreach to consumers, visits to corporate clients, mass meetings, “bad boss tours”, etc.

Application deadlines for the 2009 funding round will be posted soon.

Freedonia Grants for 2007

October 2, 2007

Freedonia completed its first funding round in 2007. The following organizations received funding from Freedonia in the 2007 Funding Round:

The Canadian Sri Lankan Women’s Network is a Toronto-based group confronting economic deprivation and social marginalization in Canada and strengthening the presence of women’s voices within the Canadian Sri Lankan community. Freedonia’s grant will help the Network conduct workshops and develop a web site. This added capacity will help ensure this unique perspective is heard.

The Hemp Workers Collective will work to lay a foundation for a regional organic and co-operative hemp industry in Renfrew County that can be a model empowering farmers and impoverished rural communities.

The Indigenous Network on Economics and Trade will be visiting aboriginal communities to discuss the extinguishment agreements promoted through the “British Columbia Treaty Process” and raise awareness of how the agreements will lead to the privatization of formerly inalienable lands held by indigenous families, the extinguishment of land rights to their traditional territories and increased corporate control over the resources in these lands.

Working autonomously in British Columbia and Ontario, Justice for Migrant Workers will be continuing their work assisting migrant farm workers in organizing to defend their rights. JFMW is an innovative organizing model amongst some of the most vulnerable workers in Canada.

LIFT (Low Income Families Together) will continue with its efforts to organize and build capacity in the ethnically diverse and densely-populated community of St. James Town in Toronto.

Freedonia’s grant to the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty’s Neighbourhood Defence Committees Project will a) strengthen leadership skills within the committees as they consolidate and grow – and hopefully proliferate across the city of Toronto; b) facilitate skill- and experience-sharing between committees; c) offer material support the committees’ activities.

The Ojibway Nation Trade Circle will gather youth from Asubpeechoseewagong and Six Nations to plan a project focusing on economic self determination and cooperation between indigenous communities in Ontario.

Punchclock, a Toronto trades/art collective, will buy tools, build its workshop and solidify its network of worker co-operativess and artists engaged in creative subversion.

Regent Park Women and Families will build community capacity, address social isolation, and offer skills development in the hope of developing functioning work collectives with low-income immigrant women in Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood.

SPUDS (Sowing Potatoes Underground for Denman Sustainability) will be experimenting with a form of collective gardening in the hope they can create a working regional example of a sustainable food system model.

Sutikalh is a camp on traditional Lliloet territory being considered for development as a ski resort and a centre for gatherings and meetings throughout the Indigenous resistance movement. Freedonia’s grant will help Sutikalh improve its on-site infrastructure.

Tsunami Print and Sew will purchase merchandise and materials for production and resale to raise additional funds to open a new info shop/gallery/organizing centre in Victoria.

Thank you to everyone who applied in the 2007 funding round. Unfortunately there were many more deserving applicants whom we were unable to fund due to limited financial resources.