Announcing Queer Mobilization Fund’s 2022 Grantees
Contact Ricky Bratz, Queer Mobilization Fund Director at ricky@southernvision.org
We are excited to finally unveil this year’s Queer Mobilization Fund (QMF) grantee cohort! This is our fourth cohort of grantees since QMF’s inception in 2016 as a rapid response fund to support community mobilizations and projects. Even though these groups engage in various frontline struggles for freedom and liberation, they are all unified by their dedication to uplift and build power for and within QTBIPOC communities in the US South.
The Queer Mobilization Fund supports these organizations through two types of grants: our Biscuits grant ($5,000) and our Gravy grant ($10,000 invitation-only to previous grantees), along with access to a cohort of peer organizations and Technical Assistance (TA). TA support allows organizations to strengthen their internal and external capacity to do their work more effectively. This year, we are proud to have offered a new Technical Assistance Only grant to organizations we are committed to building with and funding in the future. Trans and gender non-conforming people in the US South, particularly those from communities of color and working-class backgrounds, frequently find themselves in the crossfires of systemic oppression, racism, and hate.
Southern Vision Alliance launched QMF to challenge the systemic oppression faced by the QTBIPOC community, including addressing the chronic denial of funding for grassroots QTBIPOC organizers. We started with a modest goal of awarding $500.00 grants to QTBIPOC organizers in the wake of anti-trans HB2 law in North Carolina in 2016, followed by a heroic transgender resistance in NC. Since then, our highest award size has increased to $10,000. To date, we have served 70 organizations across North Carolina and many states in the US South. Many of our grantees have emerged as leaders in the LGBTQ rights movement, launched their non-profits, and some even joined SVA staff. This is a testament to the dedicated and persistent work of the QMF team to support grassroots movement building from infancy to full growth!
The livelihood and autonomy of the LGBTQ community have always been under attack, and 2022 is no different, with over 300 anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills being introduced locally and nationally—a record number of discriminatory and hateful pieces of legislation from the extreme Right. What we are seeing is the rising of violence as “Don’t Say Gay” bills begin to penetrate our schools and criminalize the act of speaking about LGBTQ issues, as access to health—evidenced by Alabama’s hateful Affirming Care Ban—becomes restricted and punishable by law, and as trans and gender non-conforming youth are unfairly barred from sports. To combat acts of hate, our movement and resource distribution must continue to support the survival, joy, brilliance, and celebration of QTBIPOC community members everywhere. We couldn’t be more ecstatic to share our 2022 Queer Mobilization Fund grantees with you!!!
Aflorar Herb CollectiveAsheville, NC & Louisville, KY
Founded in 2020
2022 BISCUITS grantee
The Aflorar Herb Collective is a collective of folk herbalists, herbal enthusiasts, artists, gardeners, and community organizers and healers working to relearn and remember our traditional ways through herbs, connection to the land, and healing through Chicanx, Latinx, Black and Indigenous traditional practices and values. We are working together using nature’s tools to guide us on a journey to restore, remember, and reconnect to our shared healing, knowledge, and freedom to liberate our communities.
Asheboro Latinxs ServicesAsheboro, NC
Founded in 2022
2022 BISCUITS Grantee
Asheboro Latinxs Services is a non-profit organization, which provides counseling, legal and social services referrals to our community. We also advocate for equal rights for the LGBTQI+ Latinxs community in N.C.
Bigwitch Indian Wisdom Initiative
Cherokee, NC
2022 BISCUITS Grantee
We are Eastern Band Cherokee tribal members (aniyvwiyv ~ Principal People), who inhabit our ancestral lands and possess knowledge about the Great Smoky Mountains. Our Indigenous Ecological Knowledge gives insight into an intimate ecology and cosmology. Indigenous Ecological Knowledge does not come from one authority or source, but comes from a shared source of indigenous stories. Funding will be used to build out a framework and support system for holding talking circles, listening sessions and events within the community centered around Tran-cestral Knowledge and Two-Spirited roles and responsibilities in the community. This platform will allow us to pass the oral teachings, provide support for other Two-Spirit identified relatives and educate the community at large, simultaneously.
Black Life Response
New Orleans, LA
Founded in 2020
2022 BISCUITS Grantee
Black Life Response is a creative and cultural organizing collective that aims to honor Black Life through the creation of programming that centers healing, investment initiatives, and calls to transformation. We do this through carving out spaces designed to center building the power of and encouraging the healing of Black folks, particularly, Black Trans and Gender Non-conforming folks.
CAKE Society Co.Arlington, VA
Founded in 2020
2022 BISCUITS grantee
CAKE Society Co. is a by trans-for-trans 501c3 nonprofit focusing on improving the mental health of our community members through health, wellness and fitness! Our holistic approach to Trans+ health inclusivity is for all Trans and Queer folx, athletes, and families. We offer community classes, events, and more! Our services encompass a variety of different Trans and Queer Centered events focusing on uplifting the community together.
Center for Participatory Change
Asheville, NC
Founded in 2001
Spring 2020 Grantee; 2022 GRAVY Grantee
The Center for Participatory Change (CPC) is a women-of-color-led organization comprised of immigrants, queer people, Black people, Latinx people, and indigenous people based in Asheville, NC. Our mission is to ignite collective power, transform systems of oppression, and heal in community. Our vision is for collective liberation, la liberación del pueblo. CPC has a 21-year legacy of supporting the capacity of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) to build, grow, and sustain movements for social justice and collective liberation. We bring significant expertise on community organizing models that engage those who are most impacted by inequities and build inclusive movements for immigrant, economic, and racial justice in Western North Carolina.
Sandstone, WV
Founded in 2013
2021 Grantee; 2022 BISCUITS Grantee
Country Queers is an ongoing multimedia oral history project documenting the diverse experiences of rural, small town, and country LGBTQIA2S+ folks – across intersecting layers of identity including race, class, age, ability, gender identity, and religion. Founded in 2013, the project has grown to include a collection of oral history interviews from all over, a gallery exhibit, instagram takeovers by rural queer and trans folks all over, and a podcast.
Durham Community Apothecary
Durham, NC
Founded in 2020
2022 BISCUITS Grantee
Durham Community Apothecary is a mutual aid resource of locally sourced and crafted herbal remedies, bulk dry herbs, and community circles for BIPOC folx rooted in Durham, NC. As a mutual aid network, we engage with our community from a place of solidarity not charity. Since our inception, we’ve been able to distribute hundreds of dollars worth of herbal medicine that supports immunity building and long-term nervous system support for low to no cost, through our partnerships with farmers, local herbalists, and leftist political organizations who are turning towards the healing power of plant medicine.
Charlotte, NC
Founded in 2020 2022
Technical Assistance Grantee
Erase Trans Hate Carolinas (ETHC) is a nonprofit organization that was started in January of 2020 by Ms. Moriah Ferguson. After her own personal attack she didn’t let it get her down. Instead she “walked on her storm and made it into a blessing for all.” Erase Trans Hate Carolinas has been started to team up with other healthcare services, school organizations and job career programs to help trans girls start a better life. Our mission is to erase the hate in daily life, violence, and the low standards of living of our trans girls of the Carolinas! We hope to build a connection with other community organizations to support and love our girls in any way possible! Soon we hope to be able to have personal trans housing and classes to teach our girls basic independent life skills! No matter how long it may take we will stand and fight to ERASE the hate!
Atlanta, GA
2022 BISCUITS Grantee
Somos una organización de base comunitaria liderada por personas Trans para la comunidad TGNC migrante latinx monolingüe que nos dedicamos a defender , organizar y empoderar tanto en los ámbitos , sociales , fisiológico , espiritual y legal en GA …
H2Afr0Durham, NC
2021 Grantee; 2022 GRAVY Grantee
H2afrO is a Black, queer and trans led environmental justice project. The project channels the embodied, emotional power of water for the sake of joy, healing, safety and liberation at the intersections of Blackness. H2afrO’s water-centered programming and education are in service of a future we deserve, are dreaming up, and manifesting right now.
Hypha Healing Garden and Apothecary
Durham, NC 2022
BISCUITS Grantee
HYPHA Healing Garden & Apothecary is a Queer and Trans, Black, Indigenous and People Of Color (BIPOC) led space where we practice healing from interpersonal and state violence by cultivating and strengthening our connections to nature (specifically by growing medicinal herbs and native plants) while providing skillshare and educational opportunities and exchanging oral histories. Hypha is located on half an acre of land in the Lakewood area of Durham, NC on the campus of The Radical Healing Center (RHC), an intentional, radically inclusive, LGBTQ+ and Black, Indigenous, People of Color centered, multiracial and multicultural campus for healing and wellness. While operating within a healing and environmental justice framework, participants work together to reclaim agricultural and herbalism skills and uplift legacies of Southern resistance in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Durham, NC. HYPHA participants work together to propagate, grow, and maintain plants; make products with plants, herbs, and flowers; and lead workshops on an array of topics including but not limited to gardening, herbalism, transformative justice, trauma and psychoeducation, and local black and brown geographies.
Kaleidoscopic Dreams Projexns
Durham, NC
Founded in 2019
2022 BISCUITS grantee
Kaleidoscopic Dream Projexns breaks apart images of “reality” with play–refracting colors, patterns, and light–to spark collective imaginings and conversations of abolitionist futures. We are based in Durham NC, although voices that feed our visions come and go across borders and between horizons. We embrace uncertainty, complexity, and creativity to report what we know in connection with other decolonizing archive projects through networks of dreamscape, strategy, and intuition.
Hattiesburg, MS
Founded in 2019
2022 BISCUITS grantee
Marsha’s Tea Room is a nonprofit organization centered on promoting the overall health and well-being of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People. We are located in Spectrum: The Other Clinic that specializes in hormone therapy for the TGNC community. We are meant to be a safe space for members of the LGBTQ community and allies to socialize and provide education to the community. Our main objective is to promote the health and welfare of the transgender community. 
Miami, FL
2022 BISCUITS Grantee
The Reflect Collective is a South Florida based organization composed entirely of QTPOC survivors of sexual violence. Reflect’s goal is to serve QTPOC survivors of sexual violence through healing art events and financial assistance. They provide annual unrestricted QTPOC survivor grants and host an annual event called Queer Fest which raises awareness about the epidemic of sexual violence in the QTPOC community.
Richmond, VA
Founded in 2016
2021 Grantee; 2022 GRAVY grantee
The Richmond Doula Project is a collective of full-spectrum doulas in Richmond, VA. With a mission to offer support and education to people through all pregnancy outcomes, RDP centers POC, LGBTQI+, and other underserved communities while focusing on providing safe, inclusive, & accessible reproductive health support for every member of our community through our true sliding scale services. RDP provides an array of services from abortion, birth, postpartum, lactation, and loss support.
SoulThrive Collective
Asheville, NC
2022 BISCUITS grantee
Community care and Healing Justice are an integral part of our journey towards collective liberation and Soulthrive Collective is dedicated to helping communities, and especially, BIPOC Queer folks, create sustainable structures and healing practices within their communities that make space for radical healing and rest. Our focus is on identifying and creating the kinship systems and value systems (community agreements) that allow us to expand beyond the concept of the individual into an interdependent mind frame of healing trauma. We acknowledge that not only is our physical liberation tied to each other, so is the liberation of our mind and soul and therefore our ability to heal and access care and we are choosing to learn ways to care for each other not just collectively but radically. We do so by working towards healing our traumas, confronting our biases, tending to our wounds, acknowledging our shadows, accessing joy, demanding ease and rest, and doing the work to truly care for ourselves and each other. (no photo)
Techmoja Dance and Theatre Company
Wilmington, NC
Founded in 2008
2021 Grantee; 2022 BISCUITS grantee
Techmoja is a dance and theatre company based in Wilmington, NC that serves Black and Brown communities in coastal NC. We believe dance and theater have the power to express often submerged narratives and create deeper understandings while advancing social and racial justice. Our work tells the stories of Queer, working class Black life in coastal North Carolina examining issues of place and resilience. Our projects are connected to community issues and organizing as we reflect back the voices of our community.
The Ladies Room
Greenville, SC
2022 Technical Assistance Grantee
My organization was founded in my living room. I started it because ,as a volunteer at a one of the local agencies , I found out they were using the data collected from the trans woman of color, as data for the gay black man. The trans poc number of participants were greater than the gay black man, yet there target demographic was more specific to the gay black man. I then formed “The Ladies Room” where we could come together to empower each other and feel respected and non expendable. I had limited resources and no money, yet the shared experiences and having a space made it worth it. I started with 4 girls and maxxed out at times with 12-18 participants. I then searched for places that would help me get hotels for the girls with nowhere to live and food pantries, job connections etc. I was then faced with the realization that these situations didn’t just come from the original agency i was at, yet it was almost uniformed that if we weren’t in therapy there was no resources or if we were not affiliated in any way that grants and funding was provided to the agencies we were overlooked, yet most of the agencies made it impossible for us to become affiliated because the created certain rules that made us ineligible!!! I understood that diversity and inclusion was included in most mission statements and I felt that this would be my only way to begin the uncomfortable conversation. I pointed these facts out and eventually I was appointed to sit on the boards, not necessarily based on knowledge or education, yet diversity. This allowed me a little more access to resources and finally an opportunity to bring about a way of starting conversations about the forgotten community of Trans women of color and some of the basic needs. To this day we still meet at my house but my fight has still just begun. I won’t stop until a day comes that I can see us walking into a building or dwelling that we can consider a safe space like everyone else, and have our numbers counted as Trans POC, and more importantly be able to feel like equals and be able to have something positive behind our names. (no photo)
There’s Still HopeCharlotte, NC
Founded in 2017
Spring 2020 Grantee; 2022 BISCUITS Grantee
We are a trans-led, fiscally sponsored organization that sits under the umbrella of Essentials for Life Ministries. We provide a transitional housing program to qualified homeless Transgender adults – ages 24 and above. Our mission is to continue advocating for collaborative, locally driven solutions to homelessness in marginalized communities of Mecklenburg County. By inspiring and empowering each individual with the tools to reach their goal of becoming self-sufficient with dignity and respect. We do our work with a vision of ending the cycle of homelessness and creating a community where every person has a place to call home, and no one spends the night without adequate shelter.
Asheville, NC
Spring 2020 and Fall 2020 Grantee; 2022 GRAVY Grantee
Tranzmission is a trans lead organization dedicated to making the lives of nonbinary and transgender individuals lives safer, happier, and healthier through education, advocacy, and support.
We Are FamilyCharleston, NC
Founded in 1995
Spring 2020 and 2021 Grantee; 2022 GRAVY grantee
We Are Family (WAF) is a Southern grassroots community-based organization founded in 1995, and is the oldest LGBTQI+ serving nonprofit in the state of South Carolina that supports queer, trans, and ally young people. WAF cultivates affirming spaces for LGBTQI+ and ally youth by providing direct services, leadership development and community engagement opportunities that have a lasting and measurable impact. We offer a wide variety of youth programming (ages 24 and under) and movement building initiatives focused on: leadership development and social support; health and wellness; and community engagement and advocacy. Simply put, We Are Family is where queer youth thrive!
Jackson, TN
Founded in 2020
2022 BISCUITS grantee
West Tennessee LGBTQ+ Support, founded in September 2020, offers community help in finding resources, and promotes a better understanding of LGBTQ+ people in our part of the state with a goal of connecting LGBTQ+ community members in rural West Tennessee with resources they need, as well as advocating for better legislation in TN.
