January 30, 2022

Community Care Awards 2021 wrap-up

In November, Affect began accepting nominations for our first-ever Community Care awards. Thanks to an anonymous donor, we started with a pool of $2500, which ensured $500 awards for 5 multiply marginalized BIPOC.

Nominations closed mid-December, and by the end of the month, generous individuals expanded the fund to $3000, allowing us to have 6 Community Care awardees.

Meet the awardees

• LaQuida Landford

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  • LaQuida Landford is the community activist and organizer behind AfroVillage PDX, a movement focused on addressing the needs of Portland’s Black and Brown communities, particularly women and those experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity.

    AfroVillage provides safe and healing spaces, direct care, and critical services including food, hygiene, and shelter to community members in need. The movement also works to address the systemic barriers that make housing, food, and economic opportunities inaccessible to Black and Brown folks.

  • LaQuida was awarded $500 for placemaking as well as community advocacy and education.

• Leila Haile

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  • Leila Haile is a community educator, organizer, and tattoo artist in the Pacific Northwest. They cofounded Ori Art Gallery, through which they host art programming, exhibitions, and fundraisers for Queer and Trans BIPOC. Leila regularly lends their time to nonprofit and community organizations, advocating for disability justice and collective liberation from white supremacy.

  • Leila was awarded $500 for social justice fundraising and crowdfunding as well as community advocacy and education.

• Natasha Marin

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  • Natasha Marin is a conceptual artist whose people-centered projects have circled the globe since 2012 and have been recognized and acknowledged by Art Forum, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, NBC, Al Jazeera, Vice, PBS and others. The City of Seattle and King County have backed BLACK IMAGINATION, a series of conceptual exhibitions. Black Imagination has engaged (and paid!) Black folks from all over the PNW region and the world — amplifying, centering, and holding sacred a diverse sample of voices including LGBTQIA+ Black youth, incarcerated Black women, Black folks with disabilities, unsheltered Black folks, and Black children. Her latest exhibition SITES OF POWER (co-curated by Jay O’Leary Woods) can be found online at black-imagination.com.

  • Natasha was awarded $500 for placemaking and peer support work.

• Simona Bearcub

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  • Simona Bearcub (she/they) is a queer Afro-Indigenous anarchist who is a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, and is tired of settler colonialism BS.

    She feels no need or desire to list any accolades in an attempt to lend credibility to her own lived experiences and voices.

    Her own bio should only have to read: Give the Land Back.

  • Simona was awarded $500 for community advocacy and education as well as grassroots organizing and peer support.

Our last two Community Care awardees chose to remain anonymous and received $500 for grassroots organizing and nonprofit volunteering, respectively.

Behind the scenes retrospective

Affect was able to offer an additional award on top of the initial 5, but we ran into various delays during this Community Care awards cycle.

Since the process was nomination-based, and people didn’t directly apply for their awards, we had to reach out to nominees largely through cold emails. Sometimes we had to solicit help from nominators before we got a response from nominees. We contacted 8 out of 21 nominees and were able to complete the payments process with 6 awardees.

The majority of our time and effort was spent in helping awardees navigate our fiscal sponsor’s payment platform (and paperwork, in the case of the awardee who chose a tax-exempt award). The fastest an awardee received their $500 was within a week, and the longest took 5 weeks.

Not everyone had ready access to internet or data plans, and we were able to provide in-person technical support for 2 awardees while following safe COVID-19 practices. Besides email, video and phone communication were also offered to every nominee.

Because nominees are already busy supporting community members, they generally have less capacity for organizational procedures, and we did our best to meet everyone where they were.

What’s next

As a disability-led organization, our first priority is to rest for a bit before starting new fundraising and project expansions.

Ideally, we’d raise $3200 before opening a new cycle of Community Care Awards at the end of the year. This would allow us to give away 6 more Community Care Awards and provide a stipend to cover the administrative work involved. If you’d like to support Affect, we’re always accepting and incredibly grateful for donations!