A Call to Action for Philanthropy
Education in the United States must change. It must be different than it has been, especially for Black and Brown children and their families. For education to be the source of information, cultivation, and power that the nation and the world need it to be, it must be re-created in the image that has been envisioned and carefully plotted by communities. Education Anew is the Communities for Just Schools Fund's work to support the systemic renewal of education, for the benefit and uplift of Black and Brown children, and thus for the good of everyone. Community is the soil in which the seeds of this new education are planted and where schooling, learning, guiding, and loving will be watered and nurtured to full, lush, green heights. Community organizers are the planters, the tillers of the soil, the harvesters. They are the dreamers and the leaders. They are who we must follow.
For CJSF, Education Anew supports the grassroots organizers who are our grantee partners and consists of our Education Anew Fund and Education Anew Fellowship.
The Communities for Just Schools Fund (CJSF) invites you to join forces with us by adding your dollars and your power to the community of resources CJSF directs to the grassroots. Formed in 2010, CJSF is a group of funders that recognizes youth, parent, and teacher voices as essential to changing education systems to work actively to cure the nation's racial illness and resulting historical trauma.
For the last 10 years, our priorities have been to Fund in the field of education justice organizing, Build the capacity of grassroots organizations to intensify their impact on education systems, Connect individuals and concepts related to education justice across sectors, and Lead in philanthropy on issues of education justice. Grassroots community organizers stretch this country to be its best self, because there is no other way to victory, freedom, and liberation. The organizers have known the promise this nation holds at its core, and they refuse to allow it to be less.
Your contribution will help CJSF provide resources directly to the field. In the organizers' vision and in ours, all schools are places where each student feels and is holistically -- physically, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically -- safe. In that vision, schools are spaces where deep relationships, healing, equity, and justice are centered.
About the Education Anew Fund
CJSF has made adjustments to our grant funding in this coronavirus moment to provide immediate support to the education justice grassroots organizers that are our grantee partners. We also are launching the Education Anew Fund to double down on our strategic priorities to Fund, Build, Connect, and Lead, and to raise additional funding to (1) ensure our ongoing ability to resource our grantee partners in and beyond this moment, and (2) increase the resources available to the field at a moment in which organizers have no space for uncertainty.
Join us. You can make a one-time donation here; or, for our friends in institutional philanthropy, you may contact us for more information on how to become a member of the donor collaborative.
About the Education Anew Fellowship
The Communities for Just Schools Fund’s Education Anew Fellow (EAF) is currently housed with grantee partner, Teaching for Change (TFC), in Washington, D.C. The Fellow works closely with CJSF staff and community partners, and with TFC'S staff and teacher network to develop the CJSF Best Practices Institute (BPI) and to support conversations and collaborations between the community organizers CJSF supports and the educators with whom TFC works, all for the greater benefit of education justice efforts nationwide.
The Education Anew Fellowship is a rich opportunity for engagement between educators and organizers. The CJSF Education Anew Fellow works with educators to build strategy, develop concrete solutions to issues of racial inequity in schools, and support lasting and constructive relationships between the CJSF organizer network and social justice educators. Such interactions are instrumental for educators, young people, parents, family, and community members to support one another and join forces to push back against inequitable systems that traumatize young people and the adults in schools and instead create healthy, welcoming learning environments and holistic, nurturing, culturally-affirming classroom practices.
Please visit the Teaching For Change Blog and DC Area Educators for Social Justice Blog for articles published by our current Education Anew Fellow, Kimberly Ellis.