On January 12, 2012, ECM presented their Burgess Urban Fund grants to 20 grassroots community organizers.

For more than 30 years, the Burgess Urban Fund (BUF) has supported grassroots community organizing in response to social injustice in Massachusetts and has awarded over $6 million in grants. This year’s grants ranged from $5,000 to $20,000.

“We feel quite strongly that by partnering with the wider community, we will have greater impact to improve the lives of the urban poor and the oppressed. This year’s grantees, truly emulate the Burgess Urban Fund’s mission and have the power and capacity to reach into so many neighborhoods as their areas of focus are: faith-based organizing, immigrants’ rights, workers’ rights, affordable housing, poverty-related organizing, youth/senior organizing,” said Dr. Ruy O. Costa, ECM’s Executive Director.

Burgess Urban Fund grantees must:  engage members of the community to identify shared concerns and create goals for social change; develop new leaders, especially among those affected by social inequality; undertake projects with concrete goals for the core constituency; articulate both the immediate and root causes of the problem through social change, and collaborate with other organizations, regional and statewide.

Our 2011 Funding areas are:

 

 

 

 

This year’s Burgess Urban Fund grantees are:

  • Alternatives for Community and the Environment: T Riders Union, Boston
  • Boston Workers Alliance, Boston
  • Brazilian Immigrant Center, Boston
  • Brazilian Women’s Group, Boston
  • Bread and Roses Housing, Lawrence
  • Brockton Interfaith Community, Brockton
  • Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, New Bedford
  • Centro Presente, Somerville
  • Chelsea Neighborhood Developers, Chelsea
  • Coalition Against Poverty, New Bedford
  • Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation: Youth Force
  • Essex County Community Organization, Lynn
  • Ex-Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement (EPOCH), Worcester
  • Massachusetts Senior Action Council, Boston
  • Merrimack Valley Project, Lawrence
  • Metropolitan Interfaith Congregations Acting for Hope (MICAH), Framingham
  • Student Immigrant Movement, Boston
  • United Interfaith Action, Fall River
  • The Worker Center for Economic Justice, Lynn
  • Worcester Homeless Action Committee, Worcester

Dr. Costa closed the awards’ presentation by telling the grantees that he knows they’ll do great things with their Burgess Urban Fund grant.  He said, “We want to celebrate you and your work to improve the lives of those in the Commonwealth affected by social injustice.”

Congratulations to our 2011 grantees!