Maine Initiatives announces its 2024 Grants for Change Cohort, awarding $540,000 in new grants to 12 community-based organizations whose work advances racial justice in Maine.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: lia@maineinitiatives.org
December 16, 2024

Maine Initiatives is thrilled to announce the 2024 Grants for Change Cohort:

99 Years Podcast
Black Owned Maine
Land in Common
Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission
Maine State Prison NAACP
Mano en Mano
Penobscot Nation Agriculture Program
Scarborough High School Civil Rights Club
Somali Bantu Community Association
Southern Maine Workers’ Center
Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness
Wabanaki Women’s Coalition, Inc.

Each of these organizations will receive a $45,000 grant paid out over three years and are invited to participate in a series of peer learning and capacity-building activities with their fellow grantess over the course of their grant period.

The 2024 cohort was selected through a community-led, participatory process featuring a Grantmaking Advisory Committee of 45 racial justice leaders from across the state and over 260 volunteer application readers. These 12 organizations were recognized as leading vital justice work aimed at addressing and healing systemic racial harms in Maine, such as:

• Educating on the forgotten Black histories of Maine and countering current anti Critical Race Theory efforts;
• Innovating and sustaining an ecosystem for Black entrepreneurs in Maine;
• Restoring land connection with and for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and diasporic communities who have been dispossessed of secure land tenure by white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism;
• Continually reviewing the effectiveness of the 1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Implementing Act and the social, economic, and legal relationship between the Wabanaki Tribes and the State;
• Reducing Maine’s use of incarceration and improving the education, rehabilitation, and re-entry status for people who are incarcerated;
• Supporting the thriving of farmworkers and immigrants in Maine;
• Cultivating sustainability and fostering community resilience through regenerative agricultural practices and strategic partnerships in the stewardship of Penobscot Tribal Farm;
• Ensuring a safe learning community for all students, particularly those excluded by systemic bias in education;
• Providing vital transitional services, advocacy, and food production to empower members of the refugee community to uphold cultural identity and economic well-being; 
• Creating a worker-led movement to improve the lives, working conditions, and terms of employment for working and poor people in Maine;
• Providing community-driven, culturally centered public health and social services to all Wabanaki communities;
• Increasing the capacity of Tribal communities to respond to domestic and sexual violence. 

Please join us in celebrating and congratulating these organizations and the transformative work they do in our communities.

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Grants for Change at Maine Initiatives is a grantmaking and community organizing program. It funds and strengthens Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color-led and -serving nonprofit organizations that are leading the work of advancing racial justice in Maine, and engages and connects communities around shared values of racial justice and equity. Since 2016, Grants for Change has committed $3,915,000 in unrestricted, general operating support to 74 organizations in Maine. 

Photo: Scarborough High School Civil Rights Club.