ORLANDO | Contigo Fund announced the recipients of its 2022 All Black Lives Fund grants during a rally and press conference in front of Orlando’s City Hall Feb. 17.
This year’s recipients are the Bros in Convo Initiative and Divas in Dialogue, both beneficiaries of this same grant last year, and Peer Support Space for their LGBTQ and Black support groups as well as for their LGBTQ Black facilitators who support the wellness of Central Florida’s Black LGBTQ community.
Before Contigo Fund executive director Marco Antonio Quiroga announced this year’s grantees, Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan read aloud a city proclamation on behalf of Mayor Buddy Dyer declaring 17, 2022 as All Black Lives Day in the city of Orlando.
“I’m delighted to be here today. And while I may not understand what it is to be a person of color, I stand with you today, and I’m proud to be here with you today,” Sheehan said.
“We are so blessed and so thankful to have the support of amazing, elected officials who believe in the fight and the liberation of all Black lives,” said Daniel Downer, executive director of Bros in Convo and co-chair of this year’s All Black Lives Fund steering committee. “I think it’s important that as we talk about this day we recognize that all Black lives, for most of the time, are very much invisible to the larger world, and that includes the work of amazing Black-led organizations here in Central Florida and what the All Black Lives Fund has been able to do is to empower and create leadership within the Central Florida area, but also amplify the voices in the visibility of Black-led organizations that are doing amazing work.”
The event featured a collection of powerful speakers including fellow All Black Lives Fund steering committee co-chair Angelica Sanchez, steering committee members and founders of the R.I.S.E. Initiative Yasmine Prosper and Shea Cutliff, Equality Florida’s press secretary Brandon Wolf and spoken word artist and activist Q.
The presentation brought the total amount in grants from the Contigo Fund’s All Black Lives Fund to $200,000 and bringing Contigo Fund’s total investment in Central Florida’s Black LGBTQ community to $400,000 since its start in 2016.
“Today is evidence of the progress that we collectively made here in our community. I couldn’t be more grateful to be sharing space with these folks, with all of you during this very historic moment,” Quiroga said. “That is what we mean by solidarity. It is not performative, it requires action and in that spirit we hope that the All Black Lives Fund and Central Florida’s commit to our LGBTQ siblings, leaders and communities will live on.”
Contigo Fund launched the All Black Lives Fund in June 2020 “inspired by the racial justice uprising in the summer of 2020 and motivated by the often invisiblized and escalating violence perpetuated against our Black, transgender family due to police brutality, white supremacy and transphobia.”
“The commitment we made in 2020 continues on today, continues tomorrow and will continue on for the history of Contigo Fund,” Quiroga said.
Speaking about Peer Support Space’s Black LGBTQ+ emotional emancipation initiative, Yasmin Flasterstein, the organization’s co-founder and executive director, said the program “is going to be led for and by Black LGBTQ+ communities to create peer lives support systems for individuals navigating a hard time, as well as to advocate against the oppressive mental health system that continues to leave the same communities behind and is rooted in white supremacy. When systems don’t show up for us, it’s communities that show up for one another.”
Mulan Montrese Williams, founder of Divas in Dialogue, spoke about how the organization was able to create a housing program with their first grant last year as well as echoed words spoken by Cutliff earlier in the rally.
“Like my sister said, we’re not asking you guys to do the work for us, just support us and watch what we can do,” Williams said. “[Contigo Fund] thank you for opening the doors for us. Thank you for inviting us to the table so that we don’t have to fight to get to the table and I’m so grateful for you.”
Downer also spoke about the importance of the All Black Lives Fund and the work Bros in Convo was able to do with last year’s grant.
“Some of the amazing work that we have been able to do would not have been possible without this funding. Thinking about how we were able to provide emotion in mind support, peer support to individuals of color living with HIV. Thinking of how we were able to provide gender-affirming chest binders to genderqueer, gender fluid, nonbinary individuals at no cost to them,” he said. “Thinking about how we were able to recognize that there wasn’t enough data talking about the needs of Black LGBTQ+ folk, and how we could create that data. All of those things would not have been possible without the All Black Lives Fund and so my heart is so full with joy, so grateful.”
You can watch Contigo Fund’s live stream, as well as see photos from the event, below.
Photos by Jeremy Williams.
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