The JustPax Fund is pleased to announce the organizations and initiatives that received funding in our 2024 application round.
A Child for All – $9,000
Stafford, VA
A Child for All provides care for Mali’s vulnerable children. The program will support the Zorokoro Children Complex’s Garden and Environmental Education Initiative. The Complex, which includes a dormitory for 25 children ages 3-7 and a primary school for another 75 children from the surrounding villages, focuses on sustainability and environmental stewardship. The garden will provide organic, local, and sustainable produce for meals. Children will receive training in sustainable growing practices. They will also participate in native species planting and learn about their benefits in reducing soil erosion, mitigating desertification, and restoring biodiversity. This initiative will provide children with training on global warming and mitigation approaches, urban planning for smart ecological cities, weather forecasting, disaster management, clean and green energy developments, agroforestry, erosion prevention techniques, and sanitation/waste management.
AMANESER 2025 – $25,000 per year for 3 years
San Juan, PR
AMANESER 2025 will expand and deepen its work for energy security and justice among vulnerable communities in Puerto Rico that are currently left out of the island’s transition to renewable energy. Their mission goes beyond energy to include promoting, designing, and implementing means for mitigation and adaptation to climate change in Puerto Rico that foster resiliency and sustainability. Their work is based on a mutual aid approach, in which community groups are organized and trained to install small-scale rooftop solar systems that meet critical needs during Puerto Rico’s frequent blackouts and intense hurricanes. The process is built to cultivate leadership among community members who can undertake further projects to transform local economies, ensuring that basic needs of energy, water and food can be met locally. Their energy model is the backbone of a holistic project for a just transition based on values of borderless justice to overcome more than 500 hundred years of colonialism.
Educate Young Girls – $25,000 per year for 3 years
West Hollywood, CA
In Cameroon, one in four girls becomes pregnant before the age of 18, and 70% of these teenage mothers live on less than $2 a day with their children. Teenage pregnancy is often viewed as taboo, leading to rejection and stigma from their communities. These young mothers frequently face economic exploitation, being either unpaid or underpaid due to their status. This project aims to tackle the economic and gender injustices faced by teenage mothers in Cameroon. The program will provide teenage mothers with vocational and business education to help them achieve financial independence. They will receive agricultural training, hands-on experience managing a farm, and literacy classes. The program also offers reproductive education to prevent future unwanted pregnancies. Each participant will receive a microloan to start an eco-friendly business, with one year of follow-up support, with the goals of increasing literacy, financial stability, and ability to care for themselves and their children.
Green New Deal Housing – $25,000 per year for 2 years
Duluth, MN
Green New Deal Housing’s mission is to develop equitable zero energy housing and a green collar workforce in the Arrowhead region of Minnesota. Their vision is a sustainable future for their communities, where access to secure housing, a healthy environment, economic opportunity and dignified work is not restricted by ancestry or zip code. They build zero energy homes for low-income families and provide green construction training focused on women and BIPOC. Their work directly assists families experiencing housing insecurity, providing pathways to homeownership in healthy, durable, and valuable homes with long term affordability. Their work also leads and assists workers, businesses and communities in the transition to green building and clean energy that is necessary to address both the climate and housing crisis.
Home Roots Foundation – $25,000 per year for 3 years
Washington, DC
The United Nations recently reported 578,074 people in Haiti, including 310,000 women and girls and 180,000 children, are internally displaced due to violence. 80% of displaced persons move in with family, and many have relocated to safer rural areas. The influx of people has severely strained the already limited resources of these impoverished communities, exacerbating poverty and food insecurity. In community meetings, women expressed their need to start a microenterprise for income. In response, Home Roots Foundation is expanding the Women’s Economic Empowerment Program to launch Operation Restore Livelihoods. This endeavor will empower 150 women by providing (1) business and livelihoods training, (2) financial access to start a microenterprise, (3) three years of monitoring and evaluation, and (4) coaching and ongoing support.
International Action Network for Gender Equity and Law (IANGEL) – $25,000 per year for 2 years
San Francisco, CA
Since regaining control of Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed over 100 edicts against the basic human rights of women and girls. Rights to education, to work, to travel, and to access the courts, are severely restricted. This gender apartheid system has worsened the problem of gender-based violence (GBV), while eliminating critical resources for support. By banning women from practicing law, and silencing their voices, the Taliban has created a crisis of poverty, despair, and injustice. IANGEL’s BRIDGE Project (Building Real Interactions to Drive Gender Equality) is a unique and powerful response. Connecting directly with women lawyers in Afghanistan, they provide a platform of economic, emotional, and professional support, which in turn enables them to assist women in crisis, to tell their stories, and to multiply impact. BRIDGE replaces despair with empowerment, providing a source of hope and resilience for Afghan women lawyers, their families, and their communities. Activities completed by IANGEL include connecting with and supporting underground schools for women and girls inside Afghanistan; working with Afghan women human rights defenders and a team of pro bono lawyers on international legal research to address the gender apartheid crisis; and providing connection and support to Afghan women lawyers, their families, and their communities.
Living Wisdom School – $25,000
Palo Alto, CA
In September of 2021, girls in Afghanistan in 6th grade and above were banned from seeking an education. According to UNICEF, “80% of school-aged Afghan girls and young women – 2.5 million people – are out of school. Nearly 30% of girls in Afghanistan have never entered primary education.” Afghan women from around the globe founded Victory Afghanistan in July 2023. They aimed to bridge the educational gap and open the door to remote learning opportunities for girls in Afghanistan. This collaborative project between The Living Wisdom School and Victory Afghanistan will provide free online education to Afghan women and provide training and employment to Afghan teachers. They envision a future where educated Afghan women become the architects of change in their lives and help rebuild Afghan society to overcome the confines of inequality, poverty, and gender discrimination.
Sacred Birthing Village Southcoast – $25,000 per year for 2 years
New Bedford, MA
Sacred Birthing Village Southcoast will create a doula initiative that will address socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic disparities in maternal health care and support the birthing population and their families by training and establishing a network of doulas to work in collaboration with community health workers and the health system at large. The culturally competent doula network will address language and cultural barriers that bar access and exacerbate health inequity. The doula network will work in synchronicity with the volunteer mentor network of SisterFriends, based on Birthing Project USA. The project is part of a joint collaboration with Southcoast Health, who will create a Perinatal Mood & Anxiety Disorder Program, and the Health Departments of New Bedford and Fall River, who will expand access to prenatal and perinatal services through an integrated HIPAA-compliant referral system.
Snipes Farm and Education Center – $25,000
Morrisville, PA
While only 71% of the U.S. population is white, 95% of American farmers are white. And while 36% of food producers in the U.S. are women, only 9% of farms are operated by women. The goal of this project is to empower young women and youth of color to build futures in an equitable food system. Youth will become mentors to high school students from low-income families involved in Snipes Farm’s Seed to Fork program, with hands-on experience in sustainable agriculture, learning culinary and leadership skills. The program will train young women and youth of color in regenerative farming practices, while providing critical nutrition to our most vulnerable neighbors, investing “cultural topsoil” through community decision-making in building local food systems.
Stonewall Youth – $15,000 per year for 2 years
Olympia, WA
Stonewall Youth is a youth-led organization that empowers youth to speak for themselves, support each other, educate their communities, and work for social justice. They address root causes of oppression while providing activities that alleviate the stresses of marginalization. The majority of their programs are for youth ages 12-21, serving three primarily rural counties in southwestern Washington. Their Formidable + Fabulous project will address skyrocketing living costs and increased transphobia and homophobia, including anti-LGBTQS+ protests, recent state legislation, and school and work-based discrimination and harassment. The program will expand youth access to essential items and emergency funds through their Free Store; increase online and in-person referrals for youth seeking housing and healthcare; develop a “Know + Fight for Your Rights” campaign; organize to devise more creative, educational, and effective responses to discrimination; and increase paid work opportunities for youth by hiring at least one new youth staff member (age 17-22) to serve as Outreach/Education Co-Director and hosting three additional Fellows/year.
WASIMA – $25,000 per year for 2 years
The United Republic of Tanzania
Human-elephant conflict and human-lion conflict negatively impact local communities living along wildlife reserves in Africa. People, Lions and Environment in Swahili “WAtu, Simba na Mazingira” (WASIMA) is a Tanzanian grassroots non-profit and non-government environment organization that promotes human-lion coexistence through community-led approaches, to stabilize and increase the estimated 1,500 lion population thriving within the complex Rukwa-Katavi-Mahale-Ugalla-Kigosi ecosystem (85000 km2), in southern-western Tanzania. WASIMA addresses human-lion conflicts and habitat degradation drivers which escalates continual vulnerabilities of locals and livestock due to negative human-wildlife interactions. This project builds on their recent WASIMA strategic plan to improve local women and youth livelihoods through self-employment, local enterprises and natural resource governance within five human-lion conflict vulnerable villages around protected areas in south-western Tanzania. The project is managed by the Great Plains Foundation-Big Cats Initiative.
Wells Mountain Initiative – $25,000
Bristol, VT
Wells Mountain Initiative (WMI) fosters social change by building a global network of grassroots leaders who are catalyzing community transformation across 54 developing countries. WMI believes that local leaders are best positioned to lead local change. Their Advancing Women’s Economic Power program will support women entrepreneurs and NGO founders in low-income countries who are tackling the issues facing their communities, including poor education, health disparities, gender inequity, and pervasive poverty. This program will provide microgrants, training, mentorship, and networking opportunities to women leaders, resulting in increased access to education, public health, grassroots innovation, and economic vitality. Over 65% of WMI staff are indigenous to the regions they serve, and 60% of international staff are women. Utilizing a locally-led development strategy, WMI facilitates programming that maximizes impact and represents the unique needs of each community.