April 14, 2025

2025 Community Care Awardees

Affect started the Community Care Awards in 2021 to recognize multiply marginalized BIPOC taking on care work in their communities. We ask people to nominate each other so Affect can serve as a bridge for your thanks and simply give away microgrants as long as funds are available.

This year, the Community Care Awards opened nominations in February and sent out awards on a rolling basis, with all four $670 awards processed by the end of March.

Meet your 2025 awardees

• Neairra Morgan

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  • Neairra Morgan is a Black queer neurodivergent chronically ill and disabled community organizer. Neairra (for pronouns, just use name) founded Sunshine’s to provide accessible, inclusive spaces of rest that center Black chronically ill/Disabled neurodivergent queer and trans individuals, both online and in person in Portland, Oregon, while staying COVID-safe. To support Sunshine’s, follow @sunshinespdx on Instagram or donate via $sunshinestea.

• Tenisha Davis

  • Tenisha Davis (she/they) is an Indigenous Two-Spirit being, parent, sex worker, and community organizer. Currently, they are Haymarket Pole Collective’s Direct Aid and Outreach Director. HMPC is a grassroots organization founded by and for the Black, Indigenous, Brown, People of Color and LGBTQIA2S+ sex worker community in Oregon.

• A’misa Chiu

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  • A’misa Chiu (she/they) is an Asian American zine maker, artist, parent and community organizer, whose work focuses on parenthood, personal experiences and Asian American identity. A’misa has organized DIY & zine fests and zine workshops for the last 15 years. Currently, A’misa works as a college librarian and curates the Reed Zine Library, which circulates over 900 zines. She can be found rollerskating, hosting dinners or at local music shows.

Our fourth Community Care awardee accepted anonymously and was honored for their cultural work.

2025 wrap-up

• In total, the Community Care Awards has now distributed $5,680 and had 10 awardees.
  • Nine awardees have been Black and/or Indigenous, in line with our commitment to prioritizing Black and Indigenous nominees.
• With limited funds, this year’s Community Care Awards was only open to Oregon-based nominees of color (apologies, Washington!).
• To prioritize safety, we made photos optional for awardees accepting publicly.
• Thanks to administrative work from the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network (aka our fiscal sponsor), the 2025 Community Care Awards are officially tax-exempt!
  • This is something that we were only able to partially offer in 2021, and it required a lot of extra grant agreement paperwork.
  • For 2025, tax-exemption was handled primarily on our fiscal sponsor’s end, without additional work required from awardees themselves.
  • All awards were sent within two weeks of receiving payment paperwork!