The groups who received grants include: The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the Iranian American Bar Association (IABA), the National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement (NLSCA) and the Bay Area Iranian-America Voter Association (BAIVOTER).
Iranian Alliances Across Boarders (IAAB) and the Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF) received grants earlier this year as part of Parsa CF’s Mehrgan 2010 Grant Cycle.
PARSA CF has awarded a series of grants to Iranian-American organizations promoting civic engagement and civil liberties protection. Parsa awarded these organizations for their efforts to educate and represent the Iranian community on key issues.
NIAC received by far the most—three grants totaling $446,000. NIAC is the largest Iranian-America political organization. The group has received two previous grants from PARSA for $70,000 to support voter registration and community organizer training. The three new grants are: $182,000 awarded in support of an initiative titled “Building Civic Participation and Leadership,” which will promote community civic engagement and the development of young leaders; $153,000 for “Cultural Heritage: Preserving and Protecting Our Rich Traditions,” a media and education campaign with presentations in major US cities in the form of “museum nights;” $111,000 for NIAC’s “Building a Strong Community” initiative. which has received equal matching funds from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, a prominent Jewish-American philanthropic organization.
A second grant of $50,000 went to the IABA for a fellowship with the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) Korematsu Institute. The fellowship will address the negative stereotypes of communities post 9/11, focusing on identifying, addressing, and shifting such depictions.
A third grant of $25,000 was awarded to the NLSCA, an organization that has represented more than 3,200 post-9/11 clients with 68 percent of Iranian descent. NLSCA’s goal now is to directly address policy change by examining how post 9/11 policies may have medically/psychologically affected the community.
A final grant of $50,000 was awarded to BAIVOTER in support of voter registration, a cause that PARSA CF believes is vital to the Iranian-American community’s strength. The grant will be used to build a database of registered voters from the 20 most populous states, and to analyze the data to find the last names of registered voters whose place of birth is Iran.