Group Category: Workers’ Rights

New York Communities Organizing Fund, Inc. (NYCOFI) is a community-based nonprofit organization that seeks to empower low- and moderate-income New Yorkers to help themselves. Through public education, advocacy, research, and direct services, NYCOFI works to improve the economic security and well-being of low-income and people of color communities throughout New York State. NYCOFI was founded in 2010 and is part of a family of organizations that includes New York Communities for Change, one of the premier community organizing institutions in New York State.

The Lambi Fund of Haiti is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to assist the popular, democratic movement in Haiti. Its goal is to help strengthen civil society as a necessary foundation of democracy and development. The fund channels financial and other resources to community-based organizations that promote the social and economic empowerment of the Haitian people.

For thirty-seven years, North Star Fund has helped make democracy happen in New York City. The organization has built a diverse network of donor-activists to support the grassroots leaders that move New York forward. It helps activists organize, gain visibility and influence, and pursue solutions to the greatest problems facing the city. By putting resources into the hands of those directly impacted by injustice and providing long-term support, North Star Fund helps causes to become social movements.

The Center for the Working Poor combines services for the poor, running an intentional community, community organizing, and training and support for mass protest movements. It acts as a consultant and trainer for a variety of groups in the labor, immigrant rights, climate justice, and anti-mass incarceration movements. In 2013, it co-founded the Momentum Training Program in order to provide accessible training around the theory and practice of new social movements. In a short amount of time, the trainings exploded as thousands of organizers and activists reported on their positive impact.

Khurpa Care Pakistan (KCP) is a Pakistani-run, Skardu-based nongovernmental organization that focuses on the welfare of porters, tourism promotion, and tourism-related conflict resolution in the region of Gilgit-Baltistan. Since 2006, Khurpa Care Pakistan has been helping set Khurpa wages, organizing seminars and stakeholder meetings on pressing issues, and leading workshops about eco-tourism. KCP also trains people in basic climbing and rescue, first aid, health and hygiene, and environmental and glacier protection.

Economists Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in 1999 to bring serious economic analysis to the public, policymakers, the press, and the progressive community. Motivated by the belief that an informed public should be able to choose policies that lead to an improving quality of life, CEPR aims to present the most important economic debates in an accurate and understandable manner. Toward this end, CEPR conducts both professional research and public education.

The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the use of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States in middle and high school classrooms across the country. Its goal is to introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of United States history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. The empowering potential of studying U.S.

Voices of a People’s History of the United States seeks to bring to light little known voices from U.S. history, including those of women, African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and laborers. By giving public expression to rebels, dissenters, and visionaries from our past—and present—we work to educate and inspire a new generation of people working for social justice. Voices works to remind people of the eloquence of ordinary people, as well as extraordinary and well-known figures from our history.

NAFSO is a fisher people-based movement fighting for human rights, sustainable development, and peace across Sri Lanka. Launched in 1993, NAFSO currently has about 12,000 members, including small scale artisanal fishers as well as agricultural and industrial workers. The group partners with 17 other groups in local and national campaigns for food sovereignty, land rights, education, and women’s empowerment.

Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization with supporters in 150 countries around the world who are linking the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment. Slow Food was founded in 1989 to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes, and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.