The Martha’s Vineyard Social Justice Leadership Foundation (MVSJLF) provided a grant of $5,000 to Adult and Community Education Martha’s Vineyard (ACE MV) to support their commitment to equity and inclusion programming and community outreach, with specific and immediate attention to supporting immigrant communities on Martha’s Vineyard. ACE MV is committed to serving the diverse populations of Martha’s Vineyard and to increasing access to higher education and workforce training for all Islanders.
The grant will help ACE MV in developing best practices and in its outreach to stakeholders in the building trades and immigrant communities on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard. The award will help provide programming with direct relation to MVSJLF’s mission to empower Island groups and individuals to transform racial and social injustices through grant-making, education, and advocacy. It advances MVSJLF’s vision of a fair and just island for all by providing the immigrant community with opportunities for job advancement, entrepreneurial guidance, English language classes, citizenship, and immigration legal services.
Planned ACE MV programming under this initiative includes:
- Workshops for Portuguese-speaking students, offering small business start-up support — ESL classes for trades workers, including advanced English and ESL for the building trades — outreach to engage immigrant communities in ongoing Pathways programming, including the new Green Jobs Pathway;
- Pathways to Citizenship workshops for employers and workers;
- An “Immigration Services Roundtable.”
To find out more about these 501(c)(3) organizations, please visit their websites at socialjusticemv.org and acemv.org. On the socialjusticemv.org website, under “Resources,” there are “Know Your Rights” cards about potential encounters with immigration officials.
