Women’s Foundation Awards $190,000 in Grants for the WFMN Fund for Safety

The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota has awarded eight grants totaling $190,000 to nonprofit organizations and the City of Minneapolis through its Fund for Safety. The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota’s Fund for Safety resources innovation to end gender-based violence, a continuum that includes including sex trafficking, domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. The Fund for Safety continues and expands upon the investments made through the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota’s MN Girls Are Not for Sale campaign.

In partnership with community leaders, WFMN follows an ethos of listening and responding to community concerns to drive strategic, cross-sector plans and create collective impact. As WFMN has transformed our role from a catalytic leader with MN Girls Are Not For Sale to supporting partner, we continue to expand our strategic focus on safety and work with communities to end gender-based violence. WFMN will invest in the organizations, leaders, and the movement to create a Minnesota where girls and women are free from every form of violence and can experience their homes, schools, and communities as safe places.

Asian Women United (St. Paul) | $25,000 — To support language advocates through capacity building to better serve individuals who are recent immigrants or refugees in Minnesota.

Casa de Esperanza (St. Paul) | $25,000 — To resource Fuerza Unida (United in Strength), an initiative that incorporates a cultural strengths perspective, leadership training, and teaches program participants, known as Amig@s, how to recognize unhealthy relationships and respond to domestic violence and sexual assault.

City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis) | $5,000 — To sponsor the sixth annual Trans Equity Summit for trans and gender nonconforming community members to connect to resources and each other, and for potential allies to learn more about issues impacting the trans/GNC community and how to integrate community visions through an equity lens.

Liberty Community Church, PCUSA (Minneapolis) | $25,000 — To support the Northside Healing Space, formerly the Northside Women’s Space, for survivors to heal from the traumas of commercial sexual exploitation.

Men As Peacemakers (Duluth) | $25,000 — To support and strengthen systems and infrastructure to sustain the movement to end sex trafficking and to elevate leaders and organizations working with communities of color, in particular American Indian communities.

Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition (Minneapolis) | $25,000 — To support research focused on sex trafficking of LGBTQ+ and Two Spirit relatives in the Minneapolis metro area and greater Minnesota.

Phumulani Minnesota African Women Against Violence (St. Paul) | $10,000 — To support convenings of multiple African communities and contextualize the issues of domestic violence and sexual assault within the cultural history and values of participants.

The Link (Minneapolis) | $50,000 — To support the leadership and convene organizations in the anti-sex trafficking movement and for Safe Harbor advocacy and lobbying.