Los Angeles, CA. During the beginning months of the pandemic, Inclusive Action for the City has helped to provide immediate cash relief for small businesses and street vendors who were not eligible for government financial support. One hundred and twenty street vendors impacted by COVID-19 received $400 cash cards in early June through the Street Vendor Emergency Fund (see above).
For several decades, tens of thousands of street vendors have served the residents and tourists of Los Angeles despite the fact it was a criminalized practice in the city. It wasn’t until 2008 when they came together to legalize street vending with the help of the organizations that specialized in community development like East LA Community Corporation (ELACC).
Cash Cards for Street Vendors were much appreciated.
As street vendors started working with nonprofits, the Legalize Street Vending Campaign: Leadership for Urban Renewal Network (LURN) was created and focused on advocating for low-income communities, primarily concentrated with small businesses.
It wasn’t until a decade later that the long-term efforts of LURN and other committed communities paid off. Street vending became legal in November 2018, and low-income entrepreneurs were able to take control of their businesses and take care of their families without risking their livelihood.
“Inclusive Action is a lender, we provide small business loans to entrepreneurs,” said Inclusive Action’s executive director Rudy Espinoza, “many of our clients are street vendors, and they were coming in already anticipating that they were not going to be able to make their payments.”
Street vendors are not generally eligible for small business relief funds or other forms of government-sponsored financial support. Espinoza and his team were aware of this and heavily discussed in mid-March whether or not they should provide loans to those who were struggling with the quarantine. However, Inclusive Action decided against this action.
“We should not be doing loans to people right now that are struggling, but we need to get people cash,” Espinoza declared.
It was decided that the best way to help street vendors immediately was to distribute $400 cash cards (seen above) that could be withdrawn and used however the individual chooses. The decision allowed for the creation of the Street Vendor Emergency Fund with the collaboration of ELACC and Public Counsel.
1,032 street vendors were given immediate relief with the fund over the summer but Espinoza believes its “a drop in the bucket” to the much larger systemic issue of street vendors not being eligible for government benefits and having to rely on nonprofit organizations for relief during the pandemic.
“There should be more systems to protect vendors and take care of them during pandemics,” Espinoza said, “and the fact of the matter is that many of them have been struggling for a long time.”
There is hope for vendors to receive more immediate relief and support by the city as the Sidewalk Vending Pilot Program was recently passed by the LA County Board of Supervisors which will invest $1 million in assisting vendors with health-compliant equipment, education outreach, and other needs that will allow street vendors to safely sell in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles.
If you have the means to donate to Inclusive City for the City to continue working to help street vendors, click here.
From Inclusive Action for the City:
Inclusive Action addresses the root causes of poverty by merging good urban policy with sound economic development initiatives that reduce barriers, increase opportunity, strengthen local economies, and empower low-income residents and entrepreneurs across Los Angeles.
Our programs and initiatives seek to uplift those who face the most obstacles to social and economic opportunity. Inclusive Action empowers communities by prototyping innovative, scalable solutions that seek systems change, generating models that can be replicated and applied to all types of urban environments.
Los Angeles, CA. Executive Director Alexandra Suh (seen above) of KIWA (Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance) has announced in July of the organization’s support for establishing Public Health Councils in LA workplaces in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
As coronavirus cases continue to increase in LA, the LA Board of Supervisors approved a motion on July 21 that would allow worker-led health councils to be established to help monitor the safety of active workplaces.
The Department of Public Health in LA County were quickly overwhelmed with enforcing citations on businesses that did not follow the guidelines. With nearly hundreds of citations and thousands of more businesses to monitor, another proposal arose in September for the Board of Supervisors. for worker-led public health councils was announced to the LA Board of Supervisors with one major upgrade of allowing third-party organizations to assist in education,
The organization’s foundational focus was to address “worker exploitation” among Koreatown workers.
Koreatown is known as the densest neighborhood in Los Angeles with populations predominantly made up of Koreans and Hispanics. The average income is comparably low to the rest of the city and the nonprofit started to bring these issue in the forefront of the LA Board of Supervisors.
KIWA began its mission by compensating Korean and Hispanic workers and business owners who were affected by the damages from the aforementioned civil unrest in 1992.
After nearly three decades KIWA continues to strongly campaign for a variety of city and neighborhood issues aimed to help disadvantaged working populations. addressing gentrification, ICE raids, and underpaid immigrant workers.
Members of KIWA walk in solidarity with BLM during the nationwide protests against police brutality in late May.
Recently, the organization has teamed up with other nonprofits to advocate and organize public health councils to monitor the health and safety of workers. The policy proposed to the LA Board of Supervisors would help monitor any instances of violation of CDC guidelines in the workplace and would be reported to the Department of Public Health to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 to LA citizens.
It is important to note that Los Angeles cases are increasing daily with roughly 1,000 more each day in the city alone as “pandemic fatigue” continues to settle in. The Public Health Council website has a counter of the numbers of cases updated every few days.
KIWA has a history of supporting causes that affect the city of Los Angeles and its county. The Healthy LA Coalition is one example
From KIWA: Workers for Justice:
Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA)’s mission is to empower Koreatown’s immigrant workers in low-wage industries for dignity and respect in the workplace and community, and to work together with other communities to realize a vision of a just Los Angeles. One of the nation’s most established workers centers, KIWA is one of few community groups organizes both Korean and Latino workers. Our vision is to bring together workers, community members, and students in a broad, multi-ethnic coalition.
Los Angeles, CA. LA Más consists of a small team that made a huge impact with the neighborhood of Northeast LA (NELA) through a food support program (seen above), partnerships with other organizations, and continuous communication with residents.
The non-profit is organized by a group of seven people who prioritize promoting projects that help to elevate working-class communities and people of color since its foundation in 2012.
Program Manager Alexandra Ramirez explained that “before COVID-19, we had two major programs” that the team primarily focused on. The Backyard Homes Project allowed homeowners to construct an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) in exchange for providing affordable housing to a Section 8 voucher, and Storefronts, LA which focused on “developing storefronts redesigned for small business owners.”
The ADU project and Storefronts, LA regularly had in-person meetings with multiple people, which could not continue as phase one of quarantine began in mid-March. “We were in the midst of doing about three or four designs,” said Ramirez, “so that had to stop.”
For the next two weeks, Ramirez and her team started checking in and getting advice from local non-profits about how to best serve the community during the shutdown. It was in these conversations that LA Más and its local partners started to note “this informal phone tree that was happening” between residents of NELA checking in with their neighbors about how they could help during the pandemic.
“And that’s when we started realizing that we could do more of those check-ins,” said Ramirez, “we didn’t know how much more we could do so we really needed to rely on our volunteers.” (seen below)
An Excel spreadsheet was created by the LA Más team and was made up of the contact information of about two thousand residents. They began contacting people on their spreadsheet in order to best understand their current needs.
“We knew that we couldn’t be the only ones making these calls and checking in with residents and that’s when we opened it up to our volunteers,” Ramirez said, “and we started training them to make calls and, yeah, we went on from there.”
After about a week of over 150 volunteers talking to residents, LA Más found that the highest needs were primarily with food and information on financial and social issues that arose during the pandemic.
Grocery sponsorship allows struggling families to be able to eat fresh food through deliveries made by LA Más volunteers. Photo credit: LA Más Outreach Lead Liliana Sánchez
In mid-April, the Northeast LA Community Response was announced on LA Más’s social media pages as an initiative to help community members gain immediate relief. Requests could range from deliveries of activity kits and face masks to information on unemployment filings and mortgage payments.
“We kept seeing how food insecurity really was so present in our community, so we have been running offshoots of that program [NE LA Community Response] ever since,” Ramirez explained.
For the rest of the summer, LA Más operated a temporary food support program, where volunteers delivered donated and sponsored grocery bags for families in need on a weekly basis.
When discussing what Ramirez hopes for in the future when the coronavirus may not be as much of a centralized issue, she said, “We really need to address the systemic issues that are impacting working-class communities of color in our neighborhood.” She continues to explain immigrant families in particular “had a really hard time getting the support they needed.”
“Really, our goal is to continue to work in addressing those underlying issues, and figuring out how do we support our community and make these issues more visible,” Ramirez concluded.
LA Más is currently focused on reinventing its mission statement and posted a week ago that:
“For the rest of 2020, we are doing ‘fieldwork’ around the priorities that community members helped us identify: housing stability, economic development and food access, to name a few. We’ll be partnering with neighbors to identify what local solutions already exist and explore where new infrastructure could be helpful.”
If you have the means to donate to LA Más to continue giving to the community or are interested in becoming a volunteer, click here.
Photo credit for the first image: Russell Horning
From LA-Más:
LA-Más designs and builds initiatives that promote neighborhood resilience and elevate the agency of working class communities of color. We envision a Northeast Los Angeles where communities of color have equitable access to the power and resources needed to shape their futures.
Los Angeles, CA. The Life Group LA is a highly praised, group-oriented non-profit that gives immense support to those affected by HIV/AIDS through emotional support groups and weekend-long seminars. It has recently adjusted to providing weekly zoom sessions and webinars amidst the pandemic due to the extreme risk of volunteers and clients catching the COVID- 19 virus by attending physical group gatherings.
Life Group LA is a volunteer-driven organization that primarily focuses on its program, known as The POZ Life Weekend Seminar, where HIV-positive individuals and their loved ones can come together to learn more about living with HIV through educational workshops and emotional support groups. There is no cost for those who apply for the seminars or support groups as the organization relies purely on donations in order to cover costs.
Life Group LA’s latest seminar had been scheduled to take place in Las Vegas on March 28-29 of this year. However, since the pandemic hit the United States, the program had been postponed until group gatherings are considered safe by medical professionals.
Despite the fact that Life Group LA primarily works with groups of people in public spaces, executive director Sunnie Rose and the organization’s volunteers decided to continue its essential goals in giving the HIV community the emotional support and encouragement they need through webinars and monthly fundraising drawings.
Click here for more recorded webinars like the one seen above.
Life Group LA has more than fifty-one presenters that volunteer their time to help educate the HIV community on topics as mentioned above. Several of the volunteered presenters are medical professionals, college professors, and multimedia artists.
Sunnie Rose, the executive director of Life Group LA, described the organization as special because it “brings people out of isolation and out of fear” and “gives them the joy and the happiness that they so deserve in life.” Now, more than ever, Life Group LA is continuing to provide support for the HIV/AIDS community and beyond during the unprecedented times of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
From Life Group LA:
If you have the means to donate to Life Group LA in order to continue to provide free services for their clients and community, click here.
Life Group LA is a powerful coalition of people focused on the spiritual, emotional and physical well-being of people living with HIV and those who support them through education, empowerment and emotional support. Our work is to assist people so that they may make informed choices and decisions regarding their healthcare and personal well-being.
Los Angeles, CA. The WriteGirl mentoring program has taken to zoom this summer and seen some unexpected benefits. Every year, the LA-based nonprofit matches over 500 girls with mentors; it also provides workshops and college guidance. WriteGirl has managed to keep its participation numbers high during the pandemic as girls who had transportation issues found it easier to be online. The organization boasts a thriving volunteer community with over 200 volunteers working as mentors, college counselors, and volunteers in the nonprofit’s program helping young women who are incarcerated.
WriteGirl Poetry Workshop at Otis College during pre-covid days.
Ever since the shift to Zoom in March, WriteGirl has faced new challenges and introduced innovative tools and activities. Program coordinators lament the fact that not all of their students are staying connected. Keren Taylor, the executive director of WriteGirl, explains, “We don’t know the reason, is it the tech divide or family? Sometimes our young people don’t come forward to tell us what is going on because of stress or family conditions.”
Taylor noted that volunteers are equipped with new online tools to engage students and to be more empathic. “We work with many students of color, who are struggling with the protests.” She explains that “the strangeness of our governmental response” has put a strain on students of color. “Add that to a mix and you really have a volatile situation for those girls, this is why we added self-care tools like exercise, going to bed early, and eating properly.”
A previous WriteGirl Songwriting Workshop
WriteGirl was launched in December 2001 to bring the skills and energy of professional women writers to teenage girls who do not otherwise have access to creative writing or mentoring programs.
WriteGirl is facing unforeseen expenses from tools such as Zoom and other needed software. On top of that, Taylor anticipates seeing the impact of COVID-19 on their fundraising programs over the next three to four months. “We expect it to be a very hard time,” said Taylor.
Another looming challenge to WriteGirl is the changing nature of education. “People used to come away energized from our meetings being part of the culture, society, and nature,” Taylor said. “Looking ahead, we’re facing zoom fatigue because everything is online including friends and school.” Taylor understands that her organization may not be the same but she believes it’s important to focus on their strengths, “our strength is in the depth of our training and the impact of our volunteers.” WriteGirl doesn’t plan to sit idle and is conducting surveys and initiating one on one calls with the participants to see how they’re being affected.
Taylor understands says the COVID-19 pandemic presents more challenges, but the nonprofit must continue giving young women something they can’t get anywhere else. “We might be in a pandemic right now but 10 years from now, those young people we’re training will be the ones saving us,” she added.
From WriteGirl:
Within a community of women writers, WriteGirl promotes creativity and self-expression to empower girls.
WriteGirl is a Los Angeles-based creative writing and mentoring organization that spotlights the power of a girl and her pen. At WriteGirl, we match girls with women writers who mentor them in creative writing. WriteGirl is a thriving community with 200 volunteer women writers serving more than 500 girls annually. Every year, we produce dozens of workshops, panel discussions, and special events to help girls get creative, get through high school, and get to college! In fact, since 2001, 100% of our graduating seniors have entered college, many on full or partial scholarships.
Through one-on-one mentoring and monthly creative writing workshops, girls are given techniques, insights, and hot topics for great writing in all genres from professional women writers. Workshops and mentoring sessions explore poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, songwriting, journalism, screenwriting, playwriting, persuasive writing, journal writing, editing, and more.
Los Angeles, CA. 105 thousand citizens of Los Angeles County have received help from the Mayor’s Fund for LA to do things like buy food and pay rent. FamilySource Centers also provided $1.2 million in grocery gift cards to nearly 10,000 Angelenos and all cards distributed in 3 days.
The amount of money on the debit cards varied from $700 to $1,500 based on an applicant’s financial and economic situation.
The Angeleno Card Program indiscriminately assists the undocumented workers and unhoused residents of the city as it is designed to randomly select a validated applicant for the prepaid debit card.
“We are helping America’s cities fill critical gaps left by the federal response to the economic devastation caused by the pandemic,” said Garcetti in an Accelerator for America press release. “Immigrants and domestic workers are essential to our economy and our communities, and we will not get through this pandemic by leaving people behind.”
The Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving life for all Angelenos. Uniquely positioned at the crossroads of local government, business, philanthropy, and the non-profit sector, the Fund facilitates the communication and collaboration vital to solving Los Angeles’ most complex challenges.
By leveraging the power of institutions and experts from across the city, the Fund helps create partnerships with the power to transform Los Angeles, making it a world leader in economic prosperity, efficiency, sustainability, and quality of life for all of its residents.
The Fund selects programs on the basis of their ability to engage public and private resources, demonstrate collaboration, seek innovative solutions, and yield measurable, transformational impact.
The Fund is supported by private donations and is overseen by an independent Board of Directors.
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