TFN Staff

Going PLACES: What Are You Giving To Communities As A Healer?

By Gabrielle Sims, Project Associate, Shah Family Foundation  

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Going PLACES is an occasional blog series featuring the voices and experiences of TFN’s PLACES Fellows. For more information on the fellowship, and to read past blog posts from our fellows, visit here.

El Paso was the city that I was most excited to visit over the course of my PLACES journey. Before the visit, I only knew two things about El Paso: that it had a rich and vibrant culture and that it was the epicenter of the immigration debates garnering national attention due to President Trump's policies and rhetoric. My state of mind was that this was going to be a trip that was emotionally and intellectually heavy but that I’d learn a lot from my peers in my PLACES cohort. I spent many days reading articles and looking over past notes that I took on our previous site visits to Newark and Bismarck to make sure that I could look at my time in El Paso through the same lens.

In short, I was ready to absorb the learnings. That was until  August 3, when a white supremacist drove 11 hours to El Paso to take the lives of 22 people at the city’s local Walmart.

And there it was.

Another mass shooting. Another hate crime on American soil. Another round of our politicians and their banal scripts saying that mass shootings are a mental illness problem and not a gun problem and that one "lone wolf" doesn’t mean that this country condones white supremacy. After the shooting, I was uneasy about visiting El Paso because I assumed there would be heaviness in the community that I wasn’t ready (willing?) to process because I wasn’t sure if I had the tools to adequately help.

The PLACES site visit to El Paso was a little over a month after the mass shooting and several months after news stories were filled with the crime of children locked in cages in detention centers. In order to absorb what we needed from the visit, our PLACES cohort reflected on what it meant to be in a community that’s recently experienced trauma and what we could learn by being honest about the perceptions we were carrying about El Paso. We spent the first day visiting several sites. The first was a historical center where we learned from the white men who worked there how "inclusive" El Paso was, and that the immigration issue was more complicated than both liberal and conservative media led people to believe.

The second site was Abara Frontiers, a local non-profit that worked with young people on the border who were new to the country. They do incredible work and took us to meet two border patrol officers to learn more about their roles. The border patrol officers, both Latinx, were eager to share about the danger of their duty to "protect the border from bad guys." When asked about the children who were locked in cages, one of the officers lapsed into talking points stating that "the news stories were wrong, [border patrol] would never lock children in cages and that the lawyer who broke that story wasn’t even present that day." Despite the reality that there were photographs and videos of children in cages in detention centers, the border patrol officer asked us to believe her because she knew the "real story." After the presentation from the border patrol officers, we visited an asylum shelter for recent immigrants before they connected with family elsewhere in the United States. I couldn’t imagine what these families had gone through on their journey to get to the asylum shelter so I didn’t think about it, I didn’t ask our site lead — I just focused on the smiles on the children’s faces.

The conflicting narratives at the history center and from the border patrol officers infuriated me but I pushed those inconvenient feelings aside. I needed to cling to the hope that showed on the children’s smiling faces and ignore the worried looks on their parent’s faces to continue on.

Later that night, our cohort went for dinner and reflected on the day but mostly the lighter things, like the weather and some of the contradictions in the stories that some of our guest speakers told us. I slept well that night and was ready for the next day. The next day, several in my PLACES cohort expressed their rage about what they saw at the asylum center and the Latinx border patrol agents’ complicity in the system that oppressed their own people. I felt a sense of disappointment in myself that I was so numb to everything I saw the previous day.

This is what white supremacy does. It wants those of us deeply committed to change to compartmentalize and forget about the reality around us. It wants us to continue to keep our fellow human beings in our "thoughts and prayers" but take no action to improve their lives through policy. And most importantly, it wants us to feel powerless in the face of its power, lies and resistance to change.

The reflection questions that Bina M. Patel, our facilitator, asked our cohort to think about in El Paso were: "What are you giving to communities as a healer?" and "How are you showing up?’'Before the experience in El Paso, I wrote that I give communities my "listening ear" and that I "show up humbly" without giving thought to how passive those responses were. At the end of my time in El Paso, especially after visiting the Walmart, I realized that communities deserve not only my "thoughts and prayers" and my "listening ear" but my anger at the system, my disappointment at the inertia of our political leaders and most importantly my commitment to sharing their stories.

I will never forget the wall of flowers and the photographed faces of the people that were murdered in cold blood at the Walmart — mothers, sons, cousins, fathers. The pain in El Paso is real but so is the city’s resilience. El Paso is strong. Since our PLACES visit in El Paso, there have been at least two other mass shootings in America. Statistically, there was one mass shooting every fifteen days in 2019.

Change will not happen if we remain passive. Change takes time, courage and consistently showing up no matter how many times the system tells us "no." Most importantly, creating change requires us to tell the truth about our past and present no matter how uncomfortable it is. My time in El Paso has inspired me to show up more authentically in my leadership on racial justice issues. Social justice can’t happen through silence.

"Never again" is an empty phrase if we don’t address our past.

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About the Author

Gabrielle Sims is currently the
project associate at Shah Family Foundation. Previously she was the program associate for the Neighborhoods and Housing Strategy at the Boston Foundation and previously worked with Freedom House and NeighborhoodWorks America.

Want to learn more about Gabrielle? Check out her interview here with La Piana Consulting where she breaks down how she brings her values into her work, how she practices selfcare, and how she learned to reclaim her time.

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by TFN Staff

Going PLACES: Small Incremental Change is Systems Change

By Sara Levine, Quality Schools Program Officer, The Rogers Family Foundation

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Going PLACES is an occasional blog series featuring the voices and experiences of TFN’s PLACES Fellows. For more information on the fellowship, and to read past blog posts from our fellows, visit here.

El Paso appears like a man-made island surrounded by the vast emptiness of the west Texas desert, far from everywhere except Ciudad Juarez.  From the air the cities appear as one between two dusty purple mountain ranges, the Rio Grande snaking through the middle.  Through town, the border wall follows and departs from the river bed as the water runs intermittently through man-made channels and the unaltered land. 

You might have heard that this border is the third-most militarized in the world.  You also might have heard of the asylum-seekers — including children — who have died in US custody in the prison-like detention centers (in El Paso and elsewhere) that continue to hold thousands of separated migrant families.

I have heard these things about this border, and more, and have felt close to tears in the days leading up to our El Paso PLACES site visit.

The morning of our first day in El Paso our PLACES facilitator Bina M. Patel of Saathi Impact asks, “What do you carry with you?”

In my journal I write:  Heavy heart. Sadness.  Anger. Love. Eagerness to help.  Appreciation for the PLACES cohort.  Emotion running close to the surface.

In pairs we practice building new stories of a personal or professional moment that challenged us.  How does it become a story of triumph without diminishing the experience?  How can we as listeners, as witnesses, show up as healers? 

Healing.  El Paso continues to heal from loved ones lost to white supremacy and gun violence on Aug. 3^d, 2019. 

The border is, and has been, a gaping wound and a scar. 

In conversations over the three days we are together, we keep returning to this question: How do we counteract systemic hopelessness?  How do we
— how do communities — remain resilient?  How can philanthropy support the work of movement building in the face of relentless sadness?

As witnesses and aspiring healers, we can’t take the bait of hopelessness.  The status quo is exactly what they — the xenophobes, the white supremacists, the neoconservatives — want.  Action is the antidote.

I am thankful to be in this place with my PLACES people.

We hear over and over again: El Paso’s history is textured by ancient land routes, by the constant movement of people, both forced and chosen.  It is a city that rejects the “otherness” of a polarizing national narrative again and again.  As Eric Summerford Person, president and CEO of the El Paso Community Foundation, says, “It’s who we were and who we are.”  Learning about the foundation’s efforts to do agile, culturally responsive, community-driven grant-making is heartening. 

El Paso has a deep-seated activist community.  Inside the Chihuahuita Community Center, I am humbled by the work of Fernando Garcia, founding director of the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR). With over 7,000 members,  BNHR “supports immigrant border communities in the promotion of their human rights and the demand of human immigration reform that is consistent with human rights”.   The criminalization of immigrants, the business of the border, is a moment 30 years in the making, with the last two years marked by increasingly outspoken white supremacists and emboldened armed militias.  “We are building a movement,” Fernando says. “Sometimes we don’t see it, but it’s there.”

Small incremental change is systems change, Bina said in our first meeting.  We don’t see it, but it’s there.

We meet with Krysten Aguilar and Marlene Yanez from La Semilla Food Center, based in Anthony, New Mexico.  Krysten explains that in addition to the food education, food access, and economic development programs they run, La Semilla Food Center sees food as a tool to dismantle systemic racism, through participatory leadership, paying community members for their time, and explicit anti-racism training. 

It’s not all hopeless, but the work is relentless.

We visit a shelter run by Annunciation House, a safe place for a night or two for asylum seekers who have been released, with nothing, from detention.  Young families, older women and men.  We awkwardly “tour” the center and then wait in the front vestibule of the building as the Assumption House staff finishes their business. 

“Ustedes son migrantes?” one elderly woman asks when she sees us. Are we migrants? No no, we’re just visiting I say.  She waves her hand and says, “No matter.  All are welcome.”

A few minutes later a black-haired little boy no more than 4 years old runs into the bathroom and emerges far too quickly. 

“¿Te lavaste las manos?”

Did you wash your hands? I ask in Spanish.  He looks at his hands and smiles at me with the look of little boys everywhere who have not washed their hands.  With a big smile he scampers away.

We are pulled into heartbreak but that’s not the end.  It can’t be.

On our last evening together, we sing and meditate together while playing drums under the open sky.  We need space to heal, too.  I am thankful for this group of smart, thoughtful, deeply passionate and compassionate people.  I am thankful for the joy I feel when we’re together and it is this joy, coupled with renewed commitment to action that I take home with me to Oakland.

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About the Author

Sara Levine has worked in the non-profit sector for more than 15 years before joining The Rogers Family Foundation in July 2016. In her role, she leads the foundation’s strategic initiative to create the conditions for quality public schools for all children in Oakland, Calif. She previously worked with New York City Leadership Academy (NYCLA) where she consulted nationally and internationally with superintendents and central office leaders to transform their local education systems. Prior to working with NYCLA, Sara was program director at Worldfund (now Educando), where she designed and launched the LISTO program, a leadership development program for public school principals in Mexico. Sara also spent three years as the director of Raising a Reader Alameda County, an early childhood literacy program, several years working in community development projects in rural Oaxaca, Mexico, and time as a teacher in Los Angeles, Calif., and Madrid, Spain. Sara holds a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University and also earned her Master of Arts in International Affairs with a concentration in Development and Latin America from George Washington University. Sara is proud to be a 2019 PLACES Fellow with the Funders’ Network. Sara lives in Oakland.

 

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by TFN Staff

Going PLACES: Generational Trauma Across Indigenous Communities

By Jonathan Cunningham, Program Officer, Seattle Foundation

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Going PLACES is an occasional blog series featuring the voices and experiences of TFN’s PLACES Fellows. For more information on the fellowship, and to read past blog posts from our fellows, visit here.

Growing up and reading about the atrocities the United States government committed against Native American tribes in the past, those wounds always struck me as close in nature — related in a way — to the atrocities that enslaved Africans experienced during a similar time period in the U.S. Thus, I’ve always wanted to have closer relationships with Native Americans — to talk about our shared experiences. However, being raised in Detroit, Mich., didn’t allow for that. I didn’t know any Native American families as a child or young adult. So like many kids raised in a U.S. school system, I only knew what I read about in school or saw on T.V.

As a 2019 PLACES fellow, when the list of site visit locations was announced, I found myself most intrigued by visiting Bismarck, North Dakota. I was excited to learn we’d get a chance to spend time with Indigenous leaders on the ground in the heart of Indian Country to hear about what issues are most pertinent with the Lakota people. I was immediately excited, humbled and nervous to learn that we’d not only spend a day visiting the Standing Rock Reservation, but that we’d meet with members of their tribal council — a very rare honor. I first learned about the Standing Rock Reservation during the intense stand-off and fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. The resiliency, resistance and indigenous wisdom which emerged during the protests at Standing Rock captured the world’s attention for 10 months. For anyone interested in learning more about it, check out videos and stories by Native filmmakers, who were best positioned to do the story justice. In January 2017, I wrote a story for City Arts Magazine in Seattle about one of the most powerful women I know, Tracy Rector, who is an Emmy-award winning mixed Choctaw/Seminole filmmaker, writer, storyteller, healer and executive director of the non-profit Indigenous Showcase, who traveled to Standing Rock with her son Solomon to experience the spiritual protest firsthand and capture it on film. Her account of the beauty she experienced at Standing Rock, juxtaposed with many of the problems and culture clashes that arose when larger groups of “white allies” arrived at the camp, is quite powerful. In a way, that’s a story which plays out time and time again in philanthropy as well.

I wrote that story just as my philanthropy career was beginning. My interview with Tracy Rector was published January 17, 2017. Ironically, that was also my official first day as a program officer at the Seattle Foundation. As a funder in Seattle, a city named after the Suquamish and Duwamish tribal leader Chief Sealth, it’s my responsibility to build alliances with the original inhabitants of this land, the traditional Coast Salish people. I have to humbly admit that my connections to Native communities as a funder are not as deep as I would like them to be. I have a long way to go in building stronger relations with the Native tribes in Greater Seattle. It’s not easy — but it’s not impossible either. At my most self-critical, I think it’s my fault for not trying hard enough or doing better outreach to ensure our grant programs have strong Native representation in the applicant pool. But I also have to remember many structural barriers exist that often prevent Native organizations from applying for grant programs, including one that doesn’t take much brain power to figure out: After 500 years, Native folks have ample reasons not to trust institutions. And despite the mutually expressed desire for Black folks and Native folks to work together more often, it doesn’t happen nearly enough. As a challenge to myself, I’d like to dive deeper into why that is.

Being in North Dakota opened my eyes to many things happening in tribal communities that I wasn’t previously privy to and I’d like to share those lessons with others. I found myself incredibly impressed during our site visit to the United Tribes Technical College, listening to Scott Davis who heads the North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission. Some of the things they’re working on building up is tourism, technology, clean energy, education, and strengthening relationships between tribal communities and the federal government. Davis, who is Lakota and Cheyenne, reminded us that most of the treaties signed by Native tribes and the federal government weren’t honored and were disregarded by local governments. The government’s legacy of giving their word and taking it back whenever they chose is a problem that’s centuries old and it still plays out today.

I immediately thought of the racist term “Indian Giver” used to categorize Native Americans who didn’t keep their word…who gave things and then took them back—and felt the irony. It’s takes an unfathomable amount of racism to commit centuries of atrocities against a people, craft treaties only to repeatedly break them and then label the Native Americans as the ones who were untrustworthy.

Other nuggets of wisdom that stayed with me: “Trauma is carried in our DNA. Alcoholism, boarding schools, child abuse. Mental health. A lack of access to health and wellness for our Urban Indians. Murdered Native women. These traumas are carried in our DNA. But my people also have resiliency and courage. They didn’t break us.”

There’s so much to unpack in that quote from Davis. I’m someone whose sobriety is incredibly important to me, thus my ears really perked up when Scott mentioned he was most proud of being 13 years sober. It’s no secret that alcoholism and substance abuse is a big issue within Native communities, just like it is within African American communities. That’s yet another thing where Black and Native folks have used substances as coping mechanisms to deal with the trauma that’s been inflicted upon us in this country for centuries.

Popular author, speaker and philanthropy professional Edgar Villanueva’s seminal book Decolonizing Wealth, also speaks about epigenetics and ways trauma is carried down through our DNA. Not surprisingly, Villanueva is Native American, thus this was another reminder of how the field of philanthropy would be wise to humble itself and learn from Native wisdom more often.

When Scott spoke about the murdered Native women, I couldn’t help but think of how this was becoming an epidemic all across Indian Country. According to Davis, part of the problem is jurisdiction issues between local/state officials and tribal police in investigating crimes. Tribal police fall under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and there aren’t enough law officers to cover the vast territories on reservations. Scott mentioned there are times when there’s only one tribal police officer on and 911 response times can take upwards of 45 minutes. If this is the case, it’s not surprising crimes go unsolved.  

Here in Seattle, our daily newspaper the Seattle Times, is running a powerful multi-part series video series about violence against Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). Roxanna White is featured in one of the videos. She’s an enrolled member of the Nez Perce tribe. I know her personally and her story of the sex trafficking that occurs within tribal communities is powerful and deserving of more attention. Seattle Foundation is now proudly partnering with Seattle Times on an Investigative Journalism Fund, and while there are many stories that deserve deep investigative reporting, having more resources committed to daylighting pertinent issues within Native communities is a worthwhile cause that we're looking at putting more muscle into as a foundation.

Through Davis we also learned that Native Americans weren't considered citizens until 1924. Before that they were considered wards of the government — on their own land. My jaw almost hit the floor. Peak racism at its finest.

The United Tribes Technical College offers 16 associate degrees, four bachelor’s degrees and a technical training program. Scott mentioned that within Native communities, they noticed that some of their youth were going to traditionally white colleges and experiencing culture shock. They were going to state colleges but unfortunately dropping out and coming back home. The need for a space like United Tribes Technical College reminds of how important Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are and how they have long served as a haven for Black students from the same cultural and racial issues indigenous students have been met with.

Lorraine Davis also spoke to us. She heads the Native American Development Center and helps with the Community Development Financial Institutions work. They offer peer to peer support for businesses. Peer support to help people in recovery. She was very knowledgeable in how Community Development Corporations (CDCs) work. She helps with streamlining the process to getting Native entrepreneurs business loans.  She taught us about the website Prosperity Now and the invaluable data it provides when looking at trends within minority communities. They are working to get data broken down by tribes I’ve been using the website since I learned of it through her. Lorraine mentioned that there aren’t a lot of foundations in North Dakota but much of her work is supported by the Northwest Area Foundation.

One of her many one-liners. “If you’re looking for solutions, start with the tribes. They have resilience and solutions but people don’t ask.”

Lorraine, who is very strong in her personality, is Scott Davis’ wife but doesn’t like to be referred to only as that. She’s successful and has her own identity apart from her husband’s. Amen to that.

If I’m going to build the deeper relationships with the Native organizations whose work I’m responsible for funding, I’ve got a lot more work to do. I’ll continue to expand my outreach in Native communities, ensure there are Native community reviewers helping us making decisions for all of the grant programs that I manage, and learn the names of all the tribes in the Puget Sound area. That outreach can’t just be by email alone. You have to get out and spend time with some of the Native leaders in our community and let them get to know you. That’s the only way trust is built. One recent progress on this front is I’ve asked our Community Programs team to start each of our meetings with a Land Acknowledgement, and they agreed. If I’m doing all of these things "in a good way", as Standing Rock Tribal Chairman Mike Faith repeatedly said during our visit, I think I’ll make progress.  It’s a responsibility that I, as a program officer, and foundations in general need to keep top of mind. Foundations based in the Puget Sound area undoubtedly owe a debt of gratitude to the Coast Salish tribes whose land we stand upon each day.

About The Author

Jonathan Cunningham is a program officer at the Seattle Foundation who brings a wealth of professional experience in developing, implementing and managing community initiatives. He is currently a Seattle Arts Commissioner with deep knowledge of navigating public, private and municipal partnerships. Jonathan previously worked at the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) as Manager of Youth Programs and Community Outreach efforts and is passionate about using arts & culture as a strategy to create racial justice. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and founder of The Residency, a youth development through hip-hop program based in Seattle.

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by TFN Staff

Going PLACES: Rise Above

By Steven Higashide, TransitCenter

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Going PLACES is an occasional blog series featuring the voices and experiences of TFN’s PLACES Fellows. For more information on the fellowship, and to read past blog posts from our fellows, visit here.

Our first order of business when we arrive in North Dakota for our most recent site visit as PLACES fellows, a red state and the 50th most travelled to state in the nation, was a conversation on assumptions: 

What assumptions are you holding for this site visit as it relates to Bismarck? 

What are your assumptions of Standing Rock Reservation? What are your expectations of the interactions and experiences that you will embark upon this week? 

I didn’t know much about North Dakota outside of valleys, reservations, and of course the recent outcry at Standing Rock; a protest against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline or #NODAPL. This information, inferences to the current administration and my own knowledge of the history of indigenous oppression, meant my assumptions were filled with emotion — and not exactly the happy kind. There was excitement around learning about a new culture, but for the most part my assumptions centered around fear, anger, frustration, and anxiety for the indigenous people. How could it not, right? When I think about my own experiences in this country, with the history of marginalization and protests within the black community, I find it challenging to operate without a sense of anxiety in this climate. I assumed the people we would meet would operate in a similar space. Surprisingly, the most important lesson that I learned during this visit to Standing Rock was not about injustice — it centered around healing. 

It is emotionally draining to operate in a space fueled by powerlessness, trauma, and hate. Those are not the items that we need to bring to the table in order to get to the work. We have to find ways to counteract our negative assumptions and emotions so that we can understand the pain that is being illustrated and learn how show up differently. I am reminded of this famous quote: 

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” – Audre Lorde 

How can we reframe our expectations to counteract the trauma and the responses that we are seeing? First, we have to be grounded. Can we drop everything that we thought we knew, and operate with a lens to understand? 

The following takeaways from Bismarck were monumental for me in reframing my expectations and counteracting my own trauma responses:

1. Ask specific questions. 

2. Try not to put your lens on the situation at hand. 

3. Amplify the stories that are shared. 

4. How do we actively check our privilege? 

5. And in the immortal words of Kendrick Lamar: Be humble. 

I found it was helpful to create this catchy phrase based on the key words in that list, plus Kendrick's reminder to be humble: Specificity, Lens, Amplify, Privilege — Kendrick Lamar S.L.A.P.s. (For those of you not versed on slang, music that "slaps" means music that's cool.) And Kendrick Lamar's music is banging, right?

I found it both encouraging and enlightening that the people of Standing Rock focused on prayer instead of fear. The Sioux Tribe have a spiritual connection to the land that dates back centuries. Their fight is about protecting this space that has provided sustenance at a very human level for years and years. More than land rights, civil rights, human rights, or access, the #NODAPL movement was about giving life—bringing and sustaining life. And it is important to the cause to be able to share that story and to control the narrative. 

Tribe members told us that each morning they began #NODAPL with a prayer. Prayer was then taken aflame as campsites were started in other places and in communities across the world. Others began to join the protests seeing it through the indigenous lens. In addition, the Sioux tribe created an emergency preparedness team, filed lawsuits, and continued to test and monitor the construction of the pipeline. While the protest may be over, the fight continues. 

The struggle has not been without negative lasting effects. The Sioux Tribe shared that they are dealing with issues of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The smell of tear gas and the sound of barking dogs is traumatizing. And to add further injustice, recent legislation has now made it a felony to protest a pipeline according to state law SB189. 

What my time in North Dakota taught me is that if we are to do the work of justice and liberation, we must come from a place of grounding. This is not a simple fight. We not only need embrace the work, but we must fully embody it. In order to do those things, we have to make space for healing. It is, to me, the most important step of it all. 

Our friends at Standing Rock did this through prayer, but there are many other methods to getting to this space: telling stories, creating safe spaces, centering the voices of the community are all measures that philanthropy can take to support communities that experience trauma and systematic oppression. We must understand, however, that it is not a short-term process, neither is it simple or easy. And so support for this work has to be just as resilient and just as responsive in order to create a dynamic shift. 

As we have learned from Standing Rock, every case may not be a complete victory. But even in those times, our presence matters. 

So, we have to presence ourselves in the movement. Ask yourself: 

“What am I called to do in this work? What do I need to let go of? How can I model leadership? How can I bring people with me?” 

As Bina M. Patel, our PLACES facilitator, so often reminds us, “Find your purpose”. We must remember it’s not just our work. If we die tomorrow, the work continues. We must create our own paths and persevere. As hard as it is to sometimes accept, even in times where you feel like you have no agency and are complicit in oppression—find your power. Know your power. 

There was a time that I operated in hopelessness. This world can so often be calloused and cold. But I am learning that this is simply my trauma response. Community trauma is often cause by social inequities, oppression, erasure. But guess what? We deserve healing. We deserve joy. We deserve to win. And I can fight for that. I will fight for that. I’ll fight so that the trauma does not define me or our movements. This is where the true liberation comes in. 

For me, that is the work. I choose to be healed. 

Let’s find grounding so that we can: 

1. Embody this work. 

2. Create wins and avenues of joy. 

3. Rise above. 

I want to thank the Tribal Council and the Lakota peoples for humbly inviting us into their space at Standing Rock Reservation. What a unique and precious opportunity. Thank you for sharing your stories with us.

About The Author

Tonja Khabir is 2019 PLACES Fellow and executive director of the Griffith Family Foundation, a social entrepreneur and community relations specialist from Macon, Ga. She has managed and supported programming in the fields of public health, community development, and education for over 10 years. As a bio-behavioral health researcher, Khabir supported teams in East & Southern Africa, enhancing health and development in vulnerable communities with organizations like USAID, International Organization for Migration, Global Health Action, and the University of Western Cape. She returned to her hometown of Macon in 2014 as the founder of Two Hands International, a nonprofit encouraging global leadership for underrepresented high school students in Middle Georgia.

She is a 2018 Emerging Cities Champion with 8 80 Cities and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. She is a founding partner of Urbane: Young Black Professionals Network of Central Georgia and was named a 2018 Emerging Leader with NewTown Macon Partners in Progress. She serves on several boards and in Macon- Bibb including the United Way of Central Georgia, the Grand Opera House, and the ONE Macon Strategic Planning Committee. Tonja has a B.A. in Sociology from Fisk University and a Master of Public Health from Morehouse School of Medicine. 

She loves yoga, reading, traveling, cooking and the arts.

 

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by TFN Staff