Our Mission
Members
In order to make progress, we have been able to unify organizations that have the same mission to improve the quality of life of immigrant and refugee communities. Our coalition works to support the community on a local, state, and federal level through various committees and events. Learn more about our members below.
Executive Board
Chair
Emgage seeks to educate, engage and empower Muslim American communities through educational events, voter initiatives, and leadership development for the purpose of creating a community of equitable, knowledgeable, and motivated citizens.
Vice-Chair
African Communities Together (ACT)
African Communities Together is an organization of African immigrants fighting for civil rights, opportunity, and a better life for our families here in the U.S. and worldwide.
ACT empowers African immigrants to integrate socially, get ahead economically, and engage civically.
We connect African immigrants to critical services, help Africans develop as leaders, and organize our communities on the issues that matter.
Providing services. ACT helps African immigrants find free or low-cost assistance with immigration, jobs, and other needs. Each year we help hundreds of African immigrants with free, high-quality immigration legal services. We also provide free referrals to trustworthy nonprofit and government agency partners. Our staff and volunteers speak multiple languages and actively outreach to underserved African communities.
Developing leaders. Through our Monthly Membership Meetings, Leadership Committees and trainings, ACT gives African immigrants the tools and information they need to become leaders on the issues that matter to them. Members engage with civic and political leaders, participate in political education, and plan ACT campaigns and actions.
Secretary
Church World Service was born in 1946, in the aftermath of World War II. Seventeen denominations came together to form an agency “to do in partnership what none of us could hope to do as well alone.” The mission: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, comfort the aged, shelter the homeless.
More recently, CWS was one of the founding members of a global partnership of faith-based humanitarian agencies, ACT Alliance, with members in 140 countries. With 130 member organizations, ACT Alliance provides a dynamic environment for collaboration in responding to human needs around the world. By working together agencies can maximize their impact.
Treasurer
Edu-Futuro is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Arlington and Fairfax Counties founded in 1998.
Edu-Futuro’s mission: To empower low-income Latino and other immigrant youth through education, leadership development and engagement of their immigrant families to become the next generation of successful professionals who transform their community.
Board Members
Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP)
The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy is Virginia’s oldest faith-based advocacy group. VICPP is a broadly diverse, morally driven group of advocates working to advance public policies that better serve low-income, vulnerable, and underrepresented communities in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Virginia League for Planned Parenthood (VLPP)
At the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood, we envision a future where there is universal understanding and support for the right of each person to responsibly manage their sexual and reproductive health. Every person’s freedom, equality and health will be enhanced by access to a full range of family planning options. When the right to family planning is accepted as fundamental and mainstream, there is the potential for each person to fulfill their own dreams.
Dreamers’ Mothers in Action (DMIA)
Somos un grupo mujeres inmigrantes y sin miedo; que decidimos levantar nuestras voces y actuar; uniéndonos, y fortaleciendonos unas a otras; para luchar por nuestros sueños y el de 11 millones de personas. El objetivo de DREAMers’ Mothers in Action (DMIA); es conseguir una solución al estatus migratorio de millones de personas; para terminar con el dolor de la separación familiar (deportaciones) que afecta a nuestra comunidad inmigrante. Abogamos por un cambio en este actual sistema migratorio; deficiente y quebrado; por leyes más humanas y justas; de acuerdo a la realidad que vivimos en estos tiempos. Abogamos por Not1more Deportaciones. Reunificación Familiar y Reforma Migratoria justa y comprensiva.
We are a group of immigrant women and without fear; That we decided to raise our voices and act; Uniting and strengthening one another; To fight for our dreams and that of 11 million people. The goal of DREAMers’ Mothers in Action (DMIA); Is to find a solution to the migratory status of millions of people; To end the pain of family separation (deportation) that affects our immigrant community. We advocate a change in this current migration system; Deficient and broken; By more humane and just laws; According to the reality that we live in these times. We advocate for Not1more Deportations. Family Reunification and Fair and Comprehensive Immigration Reform
General Membership
Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice Virginia (LIVA)
The Latina Institute Virginia is part of National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, serving to amplify the Latina/x voice, organizing, and advocacy presence in Virginia.
We work with activists and leaders throughout Virginia to inform, organize, and mobilize our communities on reproductive justice issues that impact our families and our lives.
New Virginia Majority Education Fund (NVM EF)
Working class communities of color have been shut out, silenced and ignored in Virginia, fueling widespread injustice in the state. New Virginia Majority builds the power of marginalized communities to change the political systems that aren’t working for us.
We organize within Latinx, African American, Asian American Pacific Islander and youth communities, centering the leadership and demands of working class women of color. Together, we vote, mobilize and engage to end mass incarceration, build just economic policies, protect immigrants and preserve the environment.
Tenants and Workers United (TWU)
TWU first organized in the mid-1980s in response to the scheduled mass evictions of thousands of low-income renters in the Arlandria neighborhood of Alexandria. Wrongly assuming that residents would simply leave their homes to make way for gentrification, developers sought legal and illegal means to force people out. But the tenants stayed, they studied, and they organized. Together, we won a class-action lawsuit, staving off the evictions and giving us an incentive to keep organizing.
We translated our desire to stay into a “politics of permanence.” This meant finding a solution to the problems of eviction, soaring rents, and powerlessness. Following our initial organizing victories, we began a nearly ten-year campaign to create limited-equity cooperative housing in Alexandria. And we did: the Arlandria-Chirilagua Housing Cooperative (ACHC) is a 282-unit, limited equity housing cooperative, owned and democratically controlled by predominantly low-income residents.
Purchased by residents with support from the Federal Reserve Bank, the City of Alexandria, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the ACHC effectively removed a bloc of housing from the ravages of the market – and created a new bloc of homeowners and stakeholders in our community. From those beginnings in one neighborhood fighting for affordable housing, TWU expanded to city-wide issues such as access to healthcare and excellent public education, and has now grown into a regional organization that is fighting anti-immigrant policies in Prince William County and supporting day laborers in Fairfax County.
Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. By changing policies, programs, and conditions that allow hunger and poverty to persist, we provide help and opportunity at home and far beyond where we live.
We can end hunger in our time. But churches and charities can’t do it all. Our government must also do its part. With the stroke of a pen, policies are made that redirect millions of dollars and affect millions of lives. By making our voices heard in Congress, we make our nation’s laws fairer and more compassionate. We leverage big changes for people in our country and around the world who struggle with hunger.
Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations (VACOLAO)
The Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations (VACOLAO) is a coalition of non-profit organizations serving and supporting the Latino/Hispanic immigrant communities in Virginia. Since its foundation in 2002, VACOLAO have been advocating for the rights of Latino immigrant in the Commonwealth. VACOLAO works to empower, secure equal treatment, opportunity, and representation for Latinos/Hispanics. To achieve this mission VACOLAO has provided leadership for education and advocacy for Latino immigrants and immigrant advocate supporters.
Centreville Immigration Forum (CIF)
The vision of CIF is a community that provides acceptance and opportunity for all immigrants. The mission is to implement sustainable programs that provide immigrants in need with the means to improve their lives and become more integrated into the community; improve communication and cooperation among all groups serving immigrants; and build community recognition of our strength in diversity.
The primary project of CIF is the Labor Center, which fulfills the first part of the organization’s mission. Its provides a safe, organized space where homeowners and contractors can negotiate fair work arrangements with day laborers and workers can build the skills they need to support themselves and their families.
Hamkae Center, formerly known as NAKASEC Virginia, organizes Asian Americans to achieve social, economic, and racial justice in Virginia. Through community organizing, public policy advocacy, civic engagement, youth leadership development, service provision, and community education, Hamkae Center works to build a future in which low- and middle-income, immigrant, people of color, and marginalized communities can fully participate in U.S. society and work together as makers of lasting change.
Virginia League of United Latin American Citizens (VA LULAC)
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), founded in 1929, is the oldest and most widely respected Hispanic civil rights organization in the United States of America. The Mission of the League of United Latin American Citizens is to advance the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, housing, health and civil rights of the Hispanic population of the United States.
The Mission of the Virginia League of United Latin American Citizens is to advance the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, housing, health, and civil rights of the Latinx population in the commonwealth of Virginia.
Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans of Virginia (CAPAVA)
The Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans of Virginia (CAPAVA) is a non-profit pan-Asian policy organization created in 2003 to advocate the grassroots issues of Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) in Virginia. CAPAVA is supported by volunteers who have strong backgrounds in policy who seek to bring Virginia APA issues to the attention of State and local policymakers and provide vital information on key resources to Virginia’s APA communities.
Shirlington Employment and Education Center (SEEC)
The Shirlington Employment and Education Center has been in Arlington since 2000. The aim of the Center is to provide workers who were previously on South Four Mile Run Drive with an alternate venue to seek work. It is the first official worker center still in operation in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis (TCI)
The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis provides credible, independent and accessible information and analyses of fiscal and economic issues with particular attention to the impacts on low- and moderate-income persons.
Our products inform fiscal and budget policy debates and contribute to sound decisions that improve the well-being of individuals, communities and Virginia as a whole.
Our Mission: To use policy research and analysis to advance the well-being of Virginia communities, and improve the economic security and social opportunities of all Virginians.
United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400 (UFCW Local 400)
UFCW Local 400 represents 35,000 members working in the retail food, health care, retail department store, food processing, service and other industries in Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Members of Local 400 are an important part of a democratic organization, one with a very important goal: to help workers obtain and hold onto better paychecks, job security, decent fringe benefits and justice on the job. Local 400 attains these goals through the support, unity, and involvement of members, just like you; and through community and political involvement.
Neighbor’s Keeper is a non-denominational 501c3 dedicated to the idea all human beings have worth and to be a neighbor is to open one’s heart and reach out to help anyone in need, setting aside barriers that exist to credit, employment, and healthcare. Founded in 2013 to serve the uninsured eligible for enrollment under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care also known as “Obama Care,” staff and volunteers endeavor to find a medical home for everyone they meet providing access to healthcare irrespective of ability to pay. Our work strives to bring health security to those we serve so they can attain financial security through steady income employment that strengthens families and communities.
The mission of the Sacred Heart Center is to serve as a hub for Richmond’s Latino community that opens opportunities for economic and social integration, family success and community leadership.
Hispanic Organization for Leadership & Action (HOLA)
The Hispanic Organization for Leadership & Action (HOLA), founded in 2013, is a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Prince William County, Virginia. HOLA was created to serve the Latino community in Prince William County and other cities and counties in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The founders of HOLA created the organization to work hand-in-hand with the Latino community and community at-large to engage and empower the Latino community. HOLA will seek to engage and empower the Latino community through the development of leadership and education in the community.
Service Employees International Union, Virginia 512 (SEIU Virginia 512)
Our members are home care providers, Loudoun County employees, Fairfax County employees and the employees of the Fairfax Office of the Sheriff, dedicated to delivering quality services to Virginia families.
We help older adults and people with disabilities lead healthy and active lives in their homes and communities. We keep our communities safe and secure, working as fire marshals and building inspectors. We help children learn and play as librarians, community center workers and park staff. We deliver the quality, cost-effective services that Virginia residents and small businesses rely on; and we advocate for good jobs for everyone.
American Jewish Committee (AJC)
AJC is the leading global Jewish advocacy organization, with unparalleled access to government officials, diplomats, and other world leaders. Through these relationships and our international presence, AJC is able to impact opinion and policy on the issues that matter most: combating rising anti-Semitism and extremism, defending Israel’s place in the world, and safeguarding the rights and freedoms of all people.
Just Neighbors is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization dedicated to serving and supporting the immigrant community of northern Virginia. We foster mutual understanding between immigrants and the larger community in which they live.
The mission of Just Neighbors is to provide immigration legal services to low-income immigrants and refugees of all faiths and nationalities, especially those who are most vulnerable. We also seek to foster enriching experiences that enhance community and mutual understanding among our clients, volunteers, and staff.
American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia (ACLU of Virginia)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia is a private, non-profit organization that promotes civil liberties and civil rights for everyone in the Commonwealth through public education, litigation and advocacy with the goal of securing freedom and equality for all. The ACLU is non-partisan and does not engage in electioneering on behalf of any candidate or candidates at the local, state, or national level.
In addition to the litigation for which the ACLU has been best known, we also educate the public, inform the media, lobby legislators, organize grassroots activists, and disseminate information about our constitutional freedoms through our membership and volunteers.
Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC)
The Legal Aid Justice Center provides legal representation for low-income individuals in Virginia. Our mission is to serve those in our communities who have the least access to legal resources. The Legal Aid Justice Center is committed to providing a full range of services to our clients, including services our federal and state governments choose not to fund.
Ayuda provides legal, social, and language services to help vulnerable immigrants in our neighborhoods access justice and transform their lives. Since 1973, we have served more than 100,000 low-income immigrants throughout Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia. Ayuda’s expert and dedicated professionals help immigrants from anywhere in the world navigate the immigration and justice systems and access the social safety net. This comprehensive and welcoming approach breaks down barriers, helps those in need, and makes our communities stronger.
Ayuda advocates for low-income immigrants through direct legal, social and language services, training and outreach in the Washington DC metropolitan area. We envision a community where all immigrants succeed and thrive in the United States.
Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ, Capital Area District (SEIU 32BJ CAD)
Property service workers first organized in the Washington D.C. area in the early 1940s. We merged with 32BJ in 2006 and in the last five years helped security officers in Washington, D.C. and office cleaners in Northern Virginia win the fight to join us and raise standards on the job. Today, we are 18,000 strong, with members in D.C., Montgomery Country, Northern Virginia, and Baltimore.
For nearly 50 years, Cornerstones has been helping neighbors in need overcome tough economic times in an already high cost-of-living region. The service area of Cornerstones has grown to include most of northwestern Fairfax County. Each of us can become a Cornerstone and continue our history of helping people build more stable lives by connecting them to vital resources that solve their needs for housing, childcare, food or financial assistance.
Multicultural Family and Education Center (MFEC)
Our purpose is to ensure that all children will have access to a great education and successful life, through family, school, community and business partnerships. Our programs are not limited to what happens in school. We believe that the family, schools, communities and businesses must work together, not only with schools to promote student academic success, as well as positive children’s health, wellness, and opportunities. Through information and partnerships families and their children will see how their hopes and dreams can become their future realities.
ACLU People Power Fairfax is a grassroots organization that advocates for equal justice for all members of our community, including undocumented immigrants, regardless of race or ethnicity. We seek to end voluntary cooperation and information sharing with ICE by local and state government entities and to reform practices and policies that support systemic racism. Our efforts reflect the views of our members, not necessarily those of the ACLU Virginia affiliate.
The Dream Project empowers students whose immigration status creates barriers to higher education. We start our program in high school and continue through college graduation into professional life. Students are supported through a strong network of mentoring, scholarships, and family engagement. Our start-up nonprofit has created an intentionally inclusive community where students are encouraged to use education as a vehicle to pursue their dreams and achieve their fullest potential.
Progress Virginia (ProgressVA)
ProgressVA is a multi-issue progressive advocacy organization that combines cutting edge online organizing and communications with rapid and hard-hitting earned media strategies. Year round, ProgressVA will work to engage citizens from across the state around issues of immediate state or local concern.
Our mission is to provide a strong, credible voice in advancing progressive solutions to critical community problems. But we don’t do that on our own – we work as a communications team for the entire progressive community.
Virginia Civic Engagement Table
The Virginia Civic Engagement Table strengthens and connects Virginia’s progressive nonprofit organizations and activists and acts as a hub for the larger progressive community. We believe our Commonwealth works best when every voice is heard. Our partners work together to advance equality, justice, and opportunity, to win shared policy victories and strive to engage underrepresented communities in the democratic process.
Sin Barreras (Without Barriers) empowers the immigrant community through direct services, education and advocacy, focusing on the Hispanic population of Central Virginia. We are led by people that come from the community we serve and have strong connections to it. Our direct services are performed by phone, virtually and in person during office hours and by appointment outside of those hours. We support with immigration, legal matters, DACA, navigation of various systems, and more. Our education programs include English, citizenship, leadership, literacy, GED, technology and more. Through all the work we do we see it as a responsibility to raise the issues and the voice of our community.
Virginia Organizing is a non-partisan statewide grassroots organization dedicated to challenging injustice by empowering people in local communities to address issues that affect the quality of their lives. Virginia Organizing especially encourages the participation of those who have traditionally had little or no voice in our society. By building relationships with individuals and groups throughout the state, Virginia Organizing strives to get them to work together, democratically and non-violently, for change.
Organizar Virginia es una organización imparcial de base a nivel estatal dedicada a luchar en contra de la injusticia dándole poder a la gente en las comunidades locales para que puedan exponer sus preocupaciones que les afecta en su vida diaria. Organizar Virginia especialmente fomenta la participación de aquellos que tradicionalmente han tenido poca o ninguna voz en nuestra sociedad. Estableciendo relación con grupos o personas individuales a través del estado, Organizar Virginia sigue luchando para que trabajemos juntos, democráticamente sin violencia por cambio social.
Congregation Action Network (CAN)
The Congregation Action Network (CAN), founded in 2017, is a network of faith communities in the DC/MD/VA region acting in solidarity with impacted immigrants to end the detention, deportation, and criminalization of immigrants and people of color. In the face of hate and discrimination CAN congregations are committed to showing love, compassion and hospitality. As a network, CAN is taking action to ensure a pathway to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented Americans. CAN congregations have hosted people who are at risk of deportation; accompanied people to ICE check-ins and legal hearings; held Defend Your Rights trainings; set up Rapid Response networks to show up when ICE raids take place; and pressed our local and state jurisdictions to get ICE out of schools, jails, and courts and to end all policies that racially profile and over-incarcerate people of color.
National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA)
The National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) is the nation’s leading voice for respect, recognition and labor standards for nannies, house cleaners and home care workers. Through leadership development, strategic campaigns and alliance building, we are raising employment standards for the domestic workforce while building a powerful movement for social and global justice.
NDWA was founded in 2007 by 13 local domestic worker organizing projects. As of 2021, the alliance has grown to include 75 local affiliate organizations and chapters, and a base of thousands of individual workers who have joined NDWA directly. We are building a mass base of nannies, housecleaners, and home care workers, including workers who are connected to local organizations as well as others who are in places where there is no local organization for them to join. NDWA is the home for all domestic workers in the U.S. to work together toward a shared vision of dignity and respect for all domestic workers, and for an economy and a democracy that work for us all. Learn more about us: https://www.domesticworkers.org
Unitarian Universalist for Social Justice (UUSJ)
Vision: A just, compassionate, and sustainable world community.
Mission: Advance equitable national policies and actions, aligned with UU values, through engagement, education, and advocacy.
Friends United for Equity and Grassroots Organizing (FUEGO Coalition)
Friends United for Equity and Grassroots Organizing (FUEGO) is a growing local coalition. Our inaugural efforts have been to end immigration detention, criminalization, mass incarceration and family separation by ending local collaboration with ICE.
Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC)
As the central community relations agency of the organized Jewish community in our nation’s capital, the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Washington endeavors to foster a society based on freedom, justice and democratic pluralism for it is such a society which affords Jews, and all people, the conditions most conducive to individual security, equal opportunity and creative group survival. JCRC accomplishes this goal through their work in four pillars: government relations, Israel advocacy, inter-group relations, and social justice.
Korean American Association of Northern VA
League of Women Voters of Virginia (LWV of Virginia)
The League of Women Voters of Virginia formed November 10, 1920, out of the suffrage movement. The League encourages informed and active participation in government to increase understanding of major public policy issues and to influence public policy through education and advocacy.
Virginia Poverty Law Center (VPLC)
Virginia Poverty Law Center (VPLC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization committed to breaking down systemic barriers that keep low-income Virginians in the cycle of poverty through advocacy, education, and litigation. Since 1978, we’ve advocated for legislation that benefits low-income Virginians and provided training to legal aid organizations throughout the Commonwealth in the following areas: housing, consumer rights, domestic and sexual violence, elder rights, family and child welfare, health insurance, and public benefits. We are the only statewide organization that provides training to local legal aid program staff, private attorneys, and low-income clients relating exclusively to the legal rights of low-income Virginians.
Voices for Virginia’s Children (Voices)
Voices for Virginia’s Children champions public policies and legislation that achieve positive and equitable outcomes for young people. Founded in 1994, Voices for Virginia’s Children is the commonwealth’s only independent, multi-issue child policy and advocacy organization. We are home to the KIDS COUNT data center for Virginia, which includes more than 200 state- and locality-level indicators on child well-being over time. Using this data and our independent policy research, we determine unmet needs and threats to child well-being, recommend sound policy solutions, provide objective input to policymakers, and educate and mobilize leaders and concerned citizens to support policy initiatives. We are particularly focused on children whose needs are often overlooked, concentrating our efforts on policies in the areas of early childhood, foster care and adoption, health and mental health, and family economic security. The impact of our work is felt by children, youth, and families throughout Virginia.
Northern Virginia Labor Federation, AFL-CIO (NoVA Labor)
NoVA Labor is the Northern Virginia AFL-CIO, comprised of 72 local unions and 56,000 workers.
Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance (NVAHA)
The mission of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance is to promote healthy, sustainable and equitable communities that meet the diverse housing needs of Northern Virginia residents.