Press Releases

Ford Foundation Support for Gulf Coast Revitalization Exceeds $75 million

NEW YORK, 29 August 2008—The Ford Foundation announced today that its grants and loans for Gulf Coast recovery exceed $75 million as of the third anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. To date, the foundation has supported over 100 organizations across coastal Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama that are driving revitalization efforts throughout the region.

Launched in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the foundation's Gulf Coast Transformation Initiative (GCTI) supports grassroots efforts to rebuild inclusive, culturally and economically vibrant neighborhoods in communities devastated by the twin disasters. The initiative is committed to strengthening local nonprofit and philanthropic leaders and institutions so that they can chart a new path for the region's long-term redevelopment in a way that advances equity and human dignity.

"Three years after the storm, the Gulf Coast has begun to emerge as a real cradle for democracy, with courageous new civil society leaders emerging from many of the most devastated areas," said Suzanne Siskel of the Ford Foundation. "These communities faced significant challenges of poverty and inequality before the storms. Our support is about empowering local leaders to re-imagine and rebuild their neighborhoods in a way that advances opportunity for all the region's citizens."

Since 2006, the Ford Foundation has supported efforts to both expand access to economic opportunity and to nurture and strengthen the region's cultural heritage and community leadership. The foundation has been behind initiatives that aim to secure the rights of low-income families to live and work in the region, boost affordable housing and employment opportunities, preserve and develop cultural legacies, and strengthen the role of community leaders in the region's rebuilding. This support has included:

• $30 million to strengthen the region's nonprofits to rebuild more equitable and inclusive communities. Foundation support to local philanthropic partners including the Greater New Orleans Foundation and the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation has helped launch innovative donor partnerships—including the Community Revitalization Fund and the Greater New Orleans Planning and Organizing Fund. These funds have sought to rebuild coastal Louisiana's affordable housing stock and ensure active civic engagement in the region's epic reconstruction. Grants to local civil society partners, including the Lower 9th Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association, the Mississippi Center for Justice and the Hope Coordination Center, have allowed displaced residents to return to their communities and champion affordable housing as a defining feature of the region's long-term redevelopment.

• $8 million to promote enterprises and work opportunities for all. Grantmaking has supported the economic revitalization of communities across the Gulf Coast—from Vietnamese shrimpers in rural Louisiana and Alabama to minority-owned businesses in coastal Mississippi. Grants to partners including the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice and the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance have helped build multiracial alliances to ensure that rights and opportunities for workers across the Gulf Coast are preserved and advanced.

• $7 million to preserve and grow the region's rich cultural legacy and assets. Funding has supported local artists and arts institutions, including neighborhood-based cultural institutions such as the Ashe Cultural Center, Free Southern Theater Institute and the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz. Ford's grantmaking in this area has helped mobilize and engage artists in the revitalization of the region.

• $6 million to strengthen the region's emerging civil society and public sector leadership to build a stronger, more equitable Gulf Coast region. Over the past three years, Ford has supported the launch of the New Voices Gulf Coast Transformation Fellowship as well as the Gulf Coast Fellowship for Community Transformation. Both of these fellowships are building the skills of grassroots leaders, many from marginalized communities, to ensure that they play a meaningful role in the rebuilding of a more equitable region.

To date, the foundation's work in the Gulf Coast has been instrumental in ensuring that the voices and needs of the region's most vulnerable are heard. The Ford Foundation is firmly committed to serve as a long-term partner in the region, supporting community-led initiatives to ensure that the region's long-term reconstruction directly addresses the inequality and poverty that so shocked the conscience of our nation three years ago today.

The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has been a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, guided by its goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Russia.