Funding Opportunities for Community-University Partnerships

Teams of University of Minnesota and community partners were invited to apply for grant funding towards projects emerging from the 2017 Women and Girls of Color event series. We released three requests for proposals corresponding to the topics of each event, open to collaborative teams with at least one applicant having attended the relevant community conversation. 

Support comes from  the Provost’s Office; the Office for Equity and Diversity; the Office for Public Engagement; the Office of the Vice President for Research; the Women’s Center; the Center on Women, Gender & Public Policy; the Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC); and the Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality (RIGS) Sanctuary Circle.

Congratulations to our funding recipients!

Thank you to everyone who participated in our community conversations about immigration, self-care and wellness, and education, and to those of you who submitted proposals on the topic. Our selection committee found it challenging to select among several creative and engaging projects.

Sanctuary Through the Eyes of Women and Girls

Four community-university collaborative teams were granted awards for their efforts to support women and girls of color in communities affected by deportation and racialized surveillance.

  • Protecting the Health of Women and Girls of Color in Sanctuary Cities: A Public Health Perspective Maria Arboleda, Independent Community Consultant
    Zobeida Bonilla and Jamie Stang, UMN Epidemiology and Community Health

    This partnership seeks to increase awareness of how immigration policies impact the health of women and girls of color through a community-based participatory needs assessment among immigrant Latino women and girls, a Sanctuary Research and Policy Brief documenting how key maternal and child health outcomes have been affected by immigration policies, and a series of Sanctuary Through the Eyes of Women and Girls fact sheets.
     
  • Sisters Together Organizing Refugees and Immigrants for Emancipation & Stability (STORIES)
    Linus Chan,​ UMN Law School
    Mai Neng Moua​, Private Attorney
    Jenny Srey, MN8 Campaign
    ThaoMee Xiong,​ Government Relations Consultant

    This partnership aims to open legal pathways and legislative overhaul to help non-citizen refugees with criminal convictions defend themselves against removal orders. The project seeks to bring attention to the impact of anti-immigrant policies on Southeast Asian refugee communities and to catalyze systemic change that would restore human rights to refugees and their families.
     
  • “Tales of Time” Community Dialogues and Production
    Kathryn Haddad, New Arab American Theater Works
    Erika Lee and Saengmany Ratsabout, UMN Immigration History Research Center

    This partnership will present Ahmed Ismail Yusuf’s play, “Tales of Time” at the University of Minnesota and Somali community centers. These presentations will include discussions with audience, playwright, and community experts on immigration, Islamophobia, surviving civil war, gender, and generational divide.
     
  • Where are our girls? Latina High School Students and Mass Deportation
    Bianet Castellanos, UMN American Studies
    Norma Gárces and Tamara Ramirez, El Colegio High School
    Lauren Martin, UMN Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center

    This partnership will explore the relationship between Latina girls’ declining enrollments in high school and mass deportation. El Colegio students trained in Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) will conduct oral histories with Latina classmates and their families, culminating in a video project and research report focused on how gender, immigration and poverty intersect to limit Latina girls’ educational outcomes.

Pathways to Self-Care and Wellness

Two community-university collaborative teams were granted awards for their efforts to support the health and wellbeing of women and girls of color.

  • Sexual health workshop for middle school girls of color at YWCA Minneapolis
    Lauren Eldridge, Coordinator of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, UMN School of Public Health
    Therese Genis, YWCA Minneapolis
    Danielle Eve Joseph, YWCA Minneapolis
    Kelly Prosen, YWCA Minneapolis

    This partnership proposes a two-part workshop to increase girls of color and their family’s knowledge and empowerment around sexual health, healthy and unhealthy relationships, consent, and body image.  The collaborators will use an integrated mind/body approach to covering these topics in sessions with girls, and female parents or guardians of girls who participate in YWCA Minneapolis Girls and Youth programs will be invited to attend a workshop focused on methods to facilitate healthy conversations surrounding sexual health with their children.
     
  • Development of Shelter-Based Interventions for Asian Girls Who Have Experienced Violence
    Ruby Nguyen, UMN Epidemiology & Community Health
    Claudia Waring, Asian Women United of Minnesota (AWUM)

    This partnership seeks to explore the intellectual and emotional needs of Asian girls who are living in a temporary shelter as they and their mothers seek safety after facing domestic and/or sexual violence. Trauma-informed trained project staff will discuss with mothers immediate and longer-term self-care strategies for their daughters, and together each staff-mother pair will develop potential short-term interventions and resources that could be made available while in shelter.

Supporting Girls & Women of Color in Education

Three community-university collaborative teams were granted awards for their efforts in building strategies to improve educational opportunities for women and girls of color.

  • Activista!: Jovenes Latinas in Print
    Staff from Centro Tyrone Guzman
    Jessica Lopez Lyman, UMN Chicano and Latino Studies

    This partnership proposes to provide young Latina women and femme-identifying youth with opportunities to work on peer-to-peer relationships and to amplify their voices through writing, drawing, and printmaking. The team will support girls from the Jovenes Latinas al Poder Program as they plan, design, and publish a book exploring creative approaches to advocacy.
     
  • Building Bridges to Design Careers for Girls and Women from Indigenous Communities and Communities of Color
    Abimbola Asojo, UMN Interior Design
    Brian Kelley, Young Builders and Designers

    This partnership seeks to provide girls and women from indigenous communities and communities of color with opportunities to develop successful paths to lifelong design careers. Program participants will be invited to learn, interact, and collaborate with students, faculty, and design professions through hands-on design charrettes, exercises, and activities during workshops hosted at the University of Minnesota.
     
  • Girls of Color Restorative Practices Training Series for Teacher Prep Program
    Peter Demerath, UMN Organizational Leadership and Policy Development
    Marika Pfefferkorn, Midwest Center for School Transformation
    Talaya Tolefree, Koinonia Leadership Academy

    This partnership proposes to engage girls of color directly in identifying education disparities and applying solutions of their own design, with the goal of developing strength-based relationships between girls of color and their teachers. The team will work with a cohort of girls to co-develop a training series on restorative practices for teacher preparation programs to be piloted through the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development.