Portland Archdiocese announces poverty grant winners

Archdiocese announces local CCHD grants
By Portland Archdiocese

The Archdiocese of Portland’s Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) has announced grants for four local programs totaling $20,000. The grants are awarded to local community-based projects that seek to end the root causes of poverty.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development was founded by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1970. CCHD is supported by an annual collection taken in Catholic parishes. Last year Catholics in the Archdiocese of Portland contributed more than $103,000 to assist these efforts. Among the goals for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is the two-fold mandate: to support self-sufficiency and self-determination among people who are disadvantaged; and to educate the privileged about poverty conditions.

The CCHD offers grants for:

Economic Development: Economic development projects assist poor and low-income people to develop new businesses and create new jobs. Projects provide the potential for low-income people to share greater ownership of assets and participate in decision-making.
Community Organizing: In organizing projects, people work together to address the needs of their community. Poor and marginalized people are empowered by joining together to make decisions, seeking solutions to local problems and finding ways to improve their lives and neighborhoods. These projects assist individuals to develop as community leaders and to mobilize the community’s resources.
Those projects receiving local CCHD grants from the Archdiocese of Portland are:

Organization: OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon
Project: East Portland Bus Riders Unite!

Location: Portland
Funding Award: $5000

OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon is a grassroots community-based organization working to educate, engage and empower low-income communities of color to build leadership and capacity to effectively participate in the civic process to protect their community health and interests.

CCHD funds will be used to support OPAL’s emerging campaign work around transportation and health equity, focused predominantly in low-income communities of color in East Portland neighborhoods. OPAL’s East Portland Bus Riders Unite! seeks to build power from within bus-dependent low-income communities and communities of color to provide meaningful opportunities to participate in transportation decision-making processes and build leadership for sustainable community development, particularly within the East Portland Action Plan (EPAP) committee, a diverse community-based decision-making body representing East Portland neighborhoods.

Organization: Oregon New Sanctuary Movement
Project: Love Has No Borders Campaign

Location: Portland
Funding Award: $5000

CCHD will fund the Oregon New Sanctuary Movement’s “Love Has No Borders” campaign. In this campaign ONSM is organizing people of faith – both immigrants and immigrant allies – to work for just and humane immigration reform, and to challenge the unjust social and economic policies that perpetuate poverty in immigrants’ home countries and drive migration to the United States.

Organization: Casa Latinos Unidos
Project: Latino Immigrant Equality Parent Organizing Project

Location: Corvallis
Funding Award: $5000

CCHD funding allows Casa Latinos Unidos to train 20 to 25 Latino immigrant parents to understand the education system and help their children increase their success in school. Latino immigrant parents traditionally face many barriers in the school system, preventing them from advocating for their children in their schools.

Training begins by implementing a “train the trainers model,” which allows them to train others. Training continues with advocacy training to build leadership in our community. “Training on a specific topic ends, but training on how to be an advocate lasts forever.”

Organization: Community Alliance of Tenants
Project: Housing Justice Program
Location: Portland
Funding Award: $5000

CCHD is funding Community Alliance of Tenants’ Housing Justice Program (HJP), which confronts the impacts of unjust housing policy and practice and organizes low-income renters to directly challenge unsafe housing conditions in buildings, while supporting new leaders to guide changes to housing policies. Through the HJP, Community Alliance of Tenants organizes in buildings with serious repair problems to win immediate improvements in housing conditions. Simultaneously, CAT is building a grassroots movement and initiating campaigns to win concrete, systemic improvements to housing policy and practices that will benefit all tenants.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development grants are awarded on the basis of need and not on religious affiliation.


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