Building a Community that Works for Everyone
The English Empowerment Center is a 2024 grantee of the Education Fund, a component of The Permanent Fund for Northern Virginia. To mark the occasion in September, the Community Foundation’s Sari Raskin and Renée Byng Yancey met the Empowerment Center’s Roopal Mehta Saran, Executive Director, and Michael Mahrer, Senior Director of Advancement. Our team was joined by Benton Fisher, a who collaborates with us on the Avalon Charitable Fund, which he and his wife Joan established. Benton also serves on the Board of the Justice High School Scholarship Fund. We were also happy to include our donor, Benton Fisher, in the visit! They discussed the Center’s history and work within the greater community.
According to Roopal, the 2024 Education Fund grant of $15,000 will support two thousand adults learning English. These resources will provide critical operating funds to help English Empowerment Center's adult students (often from low-income, immigrant households) build their English skills. Doing so enables them to meet their families’ immediate needs, access health and community resources, obtain new or better jobs, move into higher education, support their children’s schooling, and make long-term changes in their communities.
Data-Driven Grantmaking
This Center’s grant was made using data from the Community Foundation’s Insight Region® research center, which explores the make-up of our regional workforce. As we noted in our Championing Diversity report that in 2020, an estimated 17 percent of the region's workers identified as Asian-Pacific Islander, 16 percent as Hispanic, 12 percent as Black, and 51 percent as White.
Additionally, as our One Region report from March 2020 shared, Northern Virginia is home to one of the country’s fastest-growing immigrant populations. This fact was especially meaningful during the pandemic, as immigrant residents composed a large portion of the area’s frontline healthcare and essential workforce.
Led by our strategic plan, the Community Foundation advances four key priorities for the region: Social and Economic Mobility, Racial Justice and Equity, Inclusive Systems of Economic Growth, and Community Resilience. This grant to the English Empowerment Center was a win in all four pillars. “Our data and our strategic priorities help guide the ways in which our discretionary funds narrow the focus of funding each year for our competitive cycle. We are pleased to see how this grantee is aligned in that work for many of our Northern Virginia residents.” – Sari Raskin, Vice President of Grants and Community Leadership.
The Education Fund
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia makes grants with an education focus annually through the Community Investment Funds grant cycle, which increase immigrant children and adults’ access to education and employment opportunities. The Education Fund is a component of The Permanent Fund for Northern Virginia, an unrestricted endowment at the Community Foundation that makes grants to help build a community that works for everyone.
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