FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Hali Lee
Police Brutality, Gentrification, and Parenting Asian American LGBTQ Children Among Front-Burner Community Issues Recognized with $75,000 in Grants
Asian Women Giving Circle Awards Grants to 12 New York City-based Asian American Artists and Community Groups
NEW YORK, NY — The Asian Women Giving Circle has made $75,000 in grants to individual artists and organizations that use the power of the arts to illuminate some of the most urgent issues confronting New York City’s growing Asian American community and beyond, from the gentrification of Chinatown to the rights of caregivers and domestic workers.
Last year AWGC was selected as a client for NYU’s Wagner School of Public Administration and Urban Planning’s prestigious Capstone program, working with a team of graduate students on a research project to deepen our understanding of our role as community-based grant-makers. Interviews with a cross-section of our grantees over the years confirmed that, for many nonprofit groups and artists, we are often the seed funder for projects that might not otherwise have gotten off the ground; in some instances our support provided the growth and scale funding to bring a project to completion.
“The intersection between the arts and activism is a thrilling place to be if you’re a change-maker, but it’s not an easy place to be when you’re trying to raise money from traditional philanthropy. It’s even harder when you’re coming from a historically underrepresented community,” said AWGC founder, Hali Lee. “This year we’re reinforcing our commitment to emerging artists and new ideas that might be considered a ‘risky’ return on investment—and it is enormously wonderful when we see our grantee partners able to parlay our small grants into bigger ones. Art is about risk, and real social change takes time.”
Learn more about 2016 Grant Projects