ICARE
The Interchurch Coalition for Action, Reconciliation, and Empowerment
This organization, located in Jacksonville, Florida, is made up of 35 diverse congregations working together with low-income residents to address community and neighborhood justice issues ranging from education to public transportation to crime and drugs. The group’s Parent Organizing Project helps parents hold accountable the public education system, local government, and local law enforcement.
Beverly Coffey credits ICARE's push to improve reading skills in local schools with a boost in her son Gordon's grades and a new, positive outlook on school. Photo by Chris Van Houten
Columbus Child Care Development
This organization works to provide safe child care for farm worker families in New Mexico. Once being an in-home babysitting center, CCCD has developed into a full-fledged child care center, offering a fun, safe, educational environment. The Columbus Child Development Center's enrollment grew to 17 students, well on the way to the maximum of 32. Now the women who had started this organization, and their parent organization, the Colonias Development Council, have a new vision: creating up to three new child care centers in southern New Mexico over the next five years.
Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy
A wheelchair attendant at Los Angeles International Airport, Dionicia Robinson, knows the potential cost of speaking out. She says it cost her a promotion when as a dispatcher for wheelchair attendants she complained about the addition of extra duties without a pay increase and was immediately reassigned.
Looking for another way to address her concerns, Dionicia joined the CCHD-funded Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and went to City Hall to demonstrate in favor of a living wage. "LAANE is right there. They walk the walk with us," she says.
LAANE achievements...
LAANE has stood up for many workers' rights:
1. A LAANE–designed ordinance was passed by the Los Angeles City Council, giving health benefits, paid–time off, and anti–retaliation assurances to 10,000 low-wage workers.
2. Meticulous LAANE research triggered a City Council reevaluation of the way economic development projects are selected and administered.
3. A Living Wage campaign in Santa Monica organized 3,000 service employees in the city's tourist industry.