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Date: 5/1/2023
HOLYOKE — The Carlos Vega Fund for Social Justice announced it will be awarding four mini-grants in now their 12th year of funding organizations in the Holyoke area who are fighting in justice, oppression and poverty.
Carlos Vega was an ardent activist for civil rights, community-building, education, healthcare and social justice in Holyoke during his life until his passing in 2012. Since 2012, the Carlos Vega Fund for Social Justice has awarded $66,570 to 52 organizations in the Greater Holyoke area who are fighting for justice and building community. The fund is a donor designed fund managed by the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.
Past awardees receiving mini-grant funding from the fund include the Gray House, Enchanted Circle Theater, the Homework House, the Holyoke Safe Schools Initiative, Western Mass. Elder Care, Holyoke Public Schools and much more.
The four awardees are another group of organizations getting the light shined on through the fund of their commitment to important work within the greater Holyoke community. This year each of the four awardees are being given $1,000 through the mini grant to support their programs.
The first awardee is Give with Love’s Back to School Drive which will use its mini grant for backpacks and school supplies for kids in need. The Holyoke Health Center is also one of this year’s recipients and will use its funding toward the expansion of its books for kids’ program. This money directly will be used to give age-appropriate graphic novels that have been banned or challenged in some communities, to preteens ages 10-12 at well-child visits.
El Colibrí/Amherst Shelter is another grant winner in this round and will use its funding for a pilot program providing monthly passes to the Holyoke YMCA for unhoused women. These passes will give them access to showers, health and fitness classes and other services to promote physical, mental and emotional wellness.
The last $1,000 mini grant will go as an unsolicited “appreciation grant” initiated by the Carlos Vega Fund for Social Justice Board to Beyond Walls for their mural work in Holyoke this summer. These funds will be targeted for their community engagement program.
“Every year it is inspiring to learn about all the organizations in the greater Holyoke area doing the kind of work that my dad would have loved,” said Office of Planning and Economic Development Director Aaron Vega. “As we all know the work for social justice continues and the need to support these efforts is more critical than ever.”
This latest round of mini-grants will continue the fund’s efforts of aiming to address the injustice, oppression and poverty in the greater Holyoke area particularly for those who are marginalized by society, according to a release. Each year these grants are able to fund initiatives that foster change and promote empowerment, self-help, and economic and political justice.
“These grants are really focused on those smaller initiatives that organizations and individuals are doing. Sometimes there’s just not that flexible fund to just get out there and do something quick and we try to make it really accessible and try to make that process easy so that impacts can be had,” Aaron Vega told Reminder Publishing in March.
In addition to the latest grant cycle, the Carlos Vega Fund is welcoming three new members to its advisory board. The first new addition is Amber Black, an Easthampton resident with more than two decades of communications and fundraising experience. Chicopee resident Iris V. Crespo will also join the board with over 35 years of experience between the public sector and community-based organizations in Western Mass.
The third addition will be Courtney Joaquin, granddaughter of Carlos Vega, who will finish her undergrad social work degree at Elms College this spring.
The awards will be presented on Friday, May 12 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Holyoke Heritage State Park Visitor Center at 221 Appleton St. in Holyoke. The ceremony will mark another year of new connections with those who need the assistance and serve as proof for another year that the work of Carlos Vega lives on.
“I think keeping that legacy alive is important because people that are doing the work today out there fighting for equity, fighting for social justice, tenant’s rights, are trying to get people engaged in civic process and get them registered to vote, and he [Carlos Vega] was doing all that work for so long,” Aaron Vega said. “I think it’s important for new people who are doing social justice work to recognize there’s a lineage and a legacy behind that work.”