
Dear Community,
We are excited to announce the newest grantees from two of our signature programs, the So Love Can Win Fund and Belonging in Oakland: A Just City Cultural Fund!
Akonadi Foundation’s So Love Can Win Fund provides general support grants of $10,000 to Oakland’s Black, Indigenous, or people of color-led groups and organizations who seek to ignite and implement a radical collective vision of freedom and racial justice. The awarded projects use strategies that include local racial justice organizing, art and culture, healing and wellness, and journalism or narrative change.
In Round 1, we awarded $280,000 to 27 groups. In this round, we awarded $220,000 to 22 groups that are doing incredible work from providing healing retreats for Black and Indigenous women leaders to advocating for the rights and dignity of unhoused people in Oakland.
Meet the Round 2 2021 SLCW Grantee Partners:
- #brotherhood
- 393films
- Alena Museum
- West Oakland Cultural Action Network
- Allen Temple Leadership Institute
- Artist as a First Responder
- Banteay Srei
- Black Arts Movement District Community Development Corporation of Oakland
- Black Joy Parade
- Causa Justa :: Just Cause
- dNaga’s GIRL Project
- El Tímpano
- Freedom Community Clinic
- Fua Dia Congo
- Healing Clinic Collective
- Homies Empowerment
- Khadafy Washington Foundation
- Oakland Bureau of the San Francisco Bayview Newspaper
- Reclaim UGLY
- The Village in Oakland
- Oakland Violence Prevention Coalition
- Water Flow Productions

We also had the honor of awarding eight projects through the Belonging In Oakland: A Just City Cultural Fund, with the help of our partners, The East Bay Community Foundation and the City of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Division. These projects will receive two-year grants totaling $780,000 for projects that spark radical imagination for racial justice and activate the creativity and agency of Oakland’s community members. Belonging in Oakland: A Just City Cultural Fund challenges Oakland artists to respond to the vital question: How might we imagine a truly racially just and equitable Oakland where all belong?
Meet the 2021 Belonging in Oakland selected projects:
- “Black Joy: Kingmakers of Oakland”
- Obasi Davis and Cava Menzies, Kingmakers of Oakland
- “De-Colonizing Oakland and Peralta Hacienda”
- Walter Hood, Corrina Gould, Linda Yamane, Ruth Orta, Ramona Garibay and Vincent Medina, Friends of Peralta Hacienda Historical Park
- “Hear My Heart – Oakland Dads Speak”
- Shawn Williams, Pendarvis Harshaw and Cory TK Campbell, Dads Evoking Change
- “Reclaiming Sacred Two Spirit/LGBTQI Roles, Spirit Root Medicine People”
- M. Zamora of Spirit Root Medicine People, Loa Niumeitolu, RaheNi Gonzalez
- “Oakland SOL Revival”
- Avé-Ameenah and Laya Wig, Oakland Sustaining Ourselves Locally
- “Public Space Initiative”
- Tommy Wong, Civic Design Studio
- “Still I Rise Oakland”
- Madeleine Clifford, Ryan Nicole, and Coco Peila, The Haven Project
- “Tarpestries”
Anita Needa Bee Miralle, Pancho Pescador, Ayat Jalal Bryant, and Lola, The Village in Oakland
We’ll be sharing more about our grantee partners on our social media channels, so make sure to follow Akonadi Foundation on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Sign up for our newsletter to receive an announcement when the funds re-launch in 2022.
Congratulations to all our grantee partners and thank you to all who applied for your tireless work on behalf of Oakland communities!
About Akonadi Foundation
Akonadi Foundation’s mission is to support the development of powerful social change movements to eliminate structural racism. We invest in racial justice organizing and policy advocacy that will lead to enduring systems change, with a strategic emphasis on ending the criminalization of Black youth and youth of color in Oakland and Alameda County. Over the last two decades, the Foundation has given over 1,900 grants totaling $43 million to nonprofit organizations, primarily in the Bay Area as well as across the country.