LA VIDA LOCAL 2024-2025
On February 7-8th, Mijente gathered our 13 La Vida Local 2024 Grantees in Phoenix, Arizona for a 2-day in-person convening. We made space for the projects to come together to recognize the critical work each of them engages with and see it as part of a larger movement. Each day focused on conversations where participants shared their work and community efforts, asked meaningful questions, and explored avenues for collaboration.
During the convening, grantees went over the project goals, strategies, challenges, and opportunities of each group. Mijente was also able to bring out two previous grantees, Aflorar Herb Collective and Finca el Vapor to share their insights and provide helpful information on their experiences doing community work. Aflorar shared about a new initiative, which seeks to develop a herb growers network. Finca al Vapor also shared the important work of their network, they have built a strategy to share agroecological resources, such as organic fertilizers, and compost with other farmers in their region.
We hope that La Vida Local serves as a foundation for building community autonomy and advancing Sin el Estado efforts across the U.S. and Puerto Rico — fostering greater connection, resource-sharing, and collective growth for all. Learn more about our 2024-2025 grantees below!
La Vida Local 2024-2025 Grantees
- Alianza Comunitaria por la Cultura, el Ambiente, y el Bienestar | Aguada, Puerto Rico
Centering wellbeing, culture, and the environment for community care
Alianza Comunitaria por la Cultura, el Ambiente, y el Bienestar seeks to help recover public spaces that have been abandoned by the State, committed to helping community members lead dignified and joyful lives. The project seeks to create a physical community space that focuses on culture, the environment, and emotional wellbeing to organize their coastal community.
- Brigada Autónoma Sustentable (BAS) | Cayey, Puerto Rico | @brigada_autonoma_sustentable
Using biodiverse and ancestral practices to build self-sustaining communities
The purpose of the Autonomous Sustainable Brigade (BAS) is to collaborate in the creation of agricultural initiatives between the towns of Cayey and Caguas. The BAS combines agroecology with biodiverse and ancestral practices to contribute to community respect, solidarity and reciprocity, and integral wellbeing. The project will result in the installation of water collection and distribution systems from different sources (rain, spring, and well) in the seven BAS agricultural properties, which will advance the goal of achieving self-sustainability and water independence.
- Campensina Womb Justice | Santa Cruz, California | @campesinawombjustice
Providing reproductive justice and healing resources for Indigenous campesinas
Campesina Womb Justice is a mutual aid collective focused on womb justice and healing for indigenous rural women. Their funded project, Corazón de la Matriz, is a mutual support effort for the reproductive autonomy of Indigenous women (Majoria Mixtecas) who work in the agricultural sector in Watsonville, CA. The goal of the project is to support and empower the knowledge of the campesinas in their area so that they can continue to do this work without outside support.
- CleanWash Mobile LLC | Los Angeles, California | @carwasherxs
Developing worker power with an eye towards climate justice
CleanWash Mobile is a new cooperative of car wash workers serving the Southern California area that emerged from professional development workshops in 2016. CleanWash Mobile is the only unionized mobile car wash cooperative and uses environmentally friendly products that minimize damage to the environment. Their funding will go towards the expansion of their program, providing for the further development of staff, new uniforms, and materials.
- Herbal Harm Reduction | Orlando, Florida | @herbal.harmreduction
Empowering communities through education, harm reduction, and medicinal plants
This project increases bodily autonomy by teaching trans people how to transition without relying on a dangerous, prejudiced, and racist medical system. With the grant, they will expand their will current work and create a decentralized network of supportive community outreach by providing their allies with the technology needed to overcome barriers to accessing medications.
- Regeneración | Tucson, Arizona | @barrio_campesinxs
Promoting positive community developments, including respect for the land, the people and our culture
Regeneración aims to mobilize and organize 100 people from the South Tucson neighborhoods, through the ‘Armando Barrios’ program. Through outreach events, cafecitos, community workshops, and other community-building initiatives they are committed to developing leaders in their neighborhood that respond to the economic needs of their community and build political power. These events and workshops will incorporate topics related to community empowerment, including Know Your Rights trainings, and other social justice issues.
- Ritmo en Ruta | Caguas, Puerto Rico | @ritmoenruta
Utilizing body-based therapies to encourage individual and collective liberation
Our community healing program will offer group experiences integrating Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) and somatic techniques. Using elements of the Puerto Rican Bomba and other Afro-Caribbean resources, the initiative aims to offer rhythm-based wellness and healing for individual and collective liberation.
- OC Protests Community Coalition | Santa Ana, California | @ocprotests
Building a future where justice is a shared, tangible reality
The OC Protests Community Coalition is a volunteer-led collective that organizes alongside neighbors to provide resources and support to underserved communities via mutual aid and solidarity efforts. Through the grant, the coalition aims to expand their programming to continue their impact, including restarting their website, hosting a grocery pop-up, creating solidarity packs, and hosting a community health event.
- Projecto Snap | New Orleans, Louisiana | @arelywestley
Providing advocacy, emotional and mental supports to detained LGBTQ+ immigrants
SNAP facilitates visits to the detention centers in the region where disparately impacted LGBTQ+ immigrant community members are held, forcing them to survive systemic violence and compounded trauma, including harassment, assault, prolonged detention, and forced solitary confinement. SNAP will create several spaces for systems-impacted LGBTQ+ immigrants to connect, where they will have the opportunity to participate in and/or lead meditation, yoga, community workshops, know-your-rights programming, skills-sharing, cultural organizing, performance art, and abolitionist advocacy actions.
- Plumas Collective | South Jordan, Utah | @plumascolectiva
Offering local history-based creative writing workshops to high school students
Plumas Colectiva is composed of eight writers and visual artists based in the Wasatch Front. For this project, Plumas will coordinate with Utah Humanities, the teachers of the Utah High School Poetry Slam Initiative, and Michelle Sanchez of Salt Lake Detention Center to provide high school students with creative writing workshops based in Utah’s BIPOC and LGBTQ+ history.
- Undocumented Women’s Fund | New York, New York | @undocuwomensfund
Building a care, collective learning, and organizing network to meet the needs of immigrant women
The Undocumented Women’s Fund remains deeply embedded in the Latinx and immigrant community in New York City. They are effective agents of self-determined change due to their ability to ground the work on the familiarity resulting from cultural belonging and our long-time participation in low-wage worker organizing. Their project aims to weave a trans-generational knowledge and care network that welcomes and supports new leaders from within the community and fosters organizing strategies to fight for the rights of our newest neighbors.
- We Have Always Been Related (WHABR) | Milwaukee, Wisconsin | @whabr_kin
Promoting community connection to young people through re-Indigenization techniques
We Have Always Been Related is a community network that works to store kinship and connection. Through the project, Little Elder Growers Club, WHABR will connect young people to indigenous earthwork centering re-Indigenization techniques, including healing relations of respect for humans, other living creatures, and the land. The vision is to provide knowledge and share opportunities through earthwork and plant medicine workshops to youth in our community. It is an opportunity for youth to experience urban and rural connections to land.
- Centro de Apoyo Sustentable y de Autogestión (CASA) | San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico | @c.a.s.a_sanlorenzo
Creating community sustainability through food and connection
The Centro de Apoyo Sustentable y de Autogestión (C.A.S.A.) is a space of gathering and a support network for the people of San Lorenzo and the Eastern region that seeks to generate alternative ways of life and new ways of relating to each other. Through Proyecto La Tiendita the objective is to create a market space for community members to sell their crops and wares and develop direct relationships with consumers. They will also be offering community services such as afterschool programming to youth.