Knight Grants Will Help St. Paul Immigrants

Two St. Paul organizations are among the first grant recipients selected in a new initiative designed to help immigrants become citizens and engaged members of society. The St. Paul awards are among 29 new grants announced by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of its national Immigrant Integration Initiative.

ISAIAH, a coalition of multi-ethnic, congregation-based community organizations, will use Knight grant funds to strengthen its task force on immigrant civil rights, which helps to develop immigrant leadership and aims to overcome barriers and misunderstandings that prevent immigrants from becoming integrated in society.

The Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network, a statewide advocacy organization focused on engaging immigrants in addressing their policy needs, will receive a grant to strengthen its immigrant education and outreach programs.

Each group will receive $50,000 over the next two years. Knight Foundation selected St. Paul as one of its first communities to receive American Dream funding -- part of a $6 million program launched earlier this year to support local organizations that serve and advocate for immigrants -- due to St. Paul's fast-growing immigrant community. About 30 percent of St. Paul's foreign born are citizens, compared with 40 percent nationally.

"The foreign born in St. Paul are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as native-born residents," said Polly M. Talen, Knight's Community Partners program officer for Minnesota. "And nearly half of the foreign born in St. Paul have not completed high school. These grants will help provide several local organizations serving the immigrant community with additional resources to support their civic participation and advocate on their behalf."

Talen said this national funding complements Knight's local support to provide recent immigrant communities greater access to affordable housing in the neighborhoods on the East Side of St. Paul. It also complements another grantee's work helping both the Hispanic and Hmong communities by translating early mental health screening tools into native languages in order to improve early detection of mental health issues.

For more information about the American Dream Fund grants, visit the Knight Foundation Web site.

> More headlines