Grant program backs grassroots ideas as demand for anti-bias funding rises

New York City’s Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes and the New York City Commission on Human Rights have, since 2020, offered Community Project Grants aimed at supporting neighborhood-led efforts to combat hate, bias, and discrimination.

Among the latest awardees are 12 organizations and individuals from across the city, including Brooklyn’s Homecrest Community Services. Through intergenerational storytelling and dialogue, the group plans to use digital media to raise awareness of hate-crime prevention among young Chinese Americans.

Grant applications surge, drawing more grassroots ideas

The program is designed to support one-time community projects that help reduce hate and bias. Applicants as young as 14 are eligible to apply, and awards vary by project needs, with a maximum of $10,000.

Vijah Ramjattan, executive director of the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, said the number of applications increased by about 600% this year, a sign of growing demand for community-based resources.

“This grant program is really meant to bring everyday New Yorkers and community organizations into the process,” Ramjattan said. “They may not be large institutions with a full structure or lots of staff, but they have strong ideas, or they are already doing meaningful work.”

He pointed to the program’s youngest winner this year, a 15-year-old Asian student from Queens, who proposed a project focused on mental health awareness and youth leadership development.

Ramjattan said the grant program also helps his office connect with communities at the grassroots level and better understand tensions, discrimination, and bias that may otherwise go unnoticed.

Applications typically open around October, with winners announced the following January. During the process, the office promotes the opportunity through social media and outreach to partner organizations to make sure residents across the city know they can apply. Awardees also receive training and opportunities to connect with one another, including sessions on the definition of hate crimes and the related work of city agencies.

Homecrest documentary aims to deepen intergenerational understanding

Homecrest Community Services, which operates centers in several immigrant neighborhoods in Brooklyn’s Chinese communities, is among this year’s winners. Its project, “Our Stories, Our City: Building Belonging,” will bring Chinese American teenagers and older adults together through conversation and filmed interviews. The footage will then be edited into a documentary-style video.

According to Homecrest President Wai Yee Chan and Operations Director Zhikang Ling, the project will run in phases from now through June. Nine high school students selected from the organization’s youth program will first take part in workshops on video production, the definition of hate crimes, and how to report them.

Starting in late March, the students will interview 21 immigrant elders age 60 and older from Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay, and other neighborhoods. Interview questions will focus on their immigration journeys, their lives after arriving in the United States, and the wisdom and advice they want to pass on to younger generations. The interviews will ultimately be edited into one video, which the center plans to screen in June.

Chan said past community events revealed major gaps in communication, perspective, and understanding between younger people and their grandparents’ generation.

“We feel that young people can still talk with their parents, but with an even older generation there is a much larger gap,” Chan said. “Their ways of thinking and their energy are very different.”

Even within the same Chinese community, she said, differences in habits and life experience can create misunderstanding. By having teenagers interview older adults, organizers hope young people will gain a deeper understanding of the elders’ personal backgrounds and immigration stories, and better appreciate the challenges they have lived through.

Chan added that teaching younger generations these ideas can have a wider impact as they pass them on to friends from other communities and to the next generation.

“After learning this in a systematic way, if young people see an elder being treated unfairly in the future, they will start thinking about what they can do,” she said. “That can help build a safer society.”