Knight Foundation's American Dream Fund Invests to Support Civic Participation Among Immigrant Families in Akron

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MIAMI – As part of ongoing efforts to support immigrant integration, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded $100,000 to two immigrant grassroots organizations in the Knight brothers’ hometown of Akron.

Each grantee will receive $50,000 over the next two years to support immigrant integration efforts, including leadership development programs, English language classes, citizenship services and cultural competency training.

“Immigrants in new communities frequently lack the information and confidence to get involved in their community and in civic life,” said Vivian Celeste Neal, Knight Foundation’s program director for Akron. “The promise of Knight’s latest grants lies in encouraging the immigrant population to come out of the shadows and participate in the society in which they live.”

The Akron grantees are:

• Asian Services in Action (ASIA). Founded in 1995 to promote community integration and activism, ASIA is the first organization in northeast Ohio run for and by Asian Americans. Grant money from Knight underwrites the launch of Immigrants Living Literate in America, a program that will provide English classes and citizenship services to Asian immigrants, and cultural competency training to mainstream organizations.
• International Institute of Akron (IIA). Throughout its 90-year existence, IIA has assisted in immigrant and refugee transitions, integration and naturalization. Knight’s funding will help in developing the institute’s Citizenship Outreach Program, which will improve the organization’s current programs by strengthening partnerships with community groups and ethnic media.

These awards add to a long history of Knight Foundation grant making in Akron, where Jack and Jim Knight’s father purchased the Akron Beacon-Journal in 1915. Since the foundation’s establishment in 1950, it has made 907 grants totaling nearly $81 million to organizations in Akron that work in journalism and communities.

Since grant making through Knight’s American Dream Fund began last December, $1.77 million has been awarded to 36 grassroots organizations working in Knight communities. Grants are, with an exception made for organizations helping immigrant victims of Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, made on a biannual basis. Applications are by invitation; the next round of grants by the fund will be in the fall of 2006.

An initiative of Knight’s National Venture Fund, the $6 million American Dream Fund is the local component of the foundation’s national Immigrant Integration Initiative. The project aims to welcome newcomers into American life by encouraging civic participation, particularly with regards to naturalization and English language proficiency.

While Knight Foundation is the sole contributor to the American Dream Fund, the foundation coordinates its broader immigrant strategy with other funding partners through the Four Freedoms Fund, including Carnegie Corp. of New York, Ford Foundation, Open Society Institute, Joyce Foundation, the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund. National, the Horace Hagedorn Foundation and Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.The nonprofit groups supported by Knight in its work to increase immigrant civic participation are the National Immigration Forum, Center for Community Change, National Council of La Raza and Hispanics in Philanthropy.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of Akron and other communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. To see and hear stories of Knight’s transformational funding in the field of immigration, visit www.knightfdn.org/annual.