FPWA
Fulfilling the Promise of Opportunity
FPWA
Fulfilling the Promise of Opportunity
FPWA serves as a critical resource for New York City's faith community. Our faith based initiatives and activities include advocacy opportunities, effective strategies for mobilizing communities, training and information services, and capacity building.
In addition, we connect our membership and faith partners to our extended network of policymakers, legislators, and other human services and faith-based organizations. We also work with churches and other faith-based service providers to bring a powerful, informed, united, and focused voice of the faith community to major social service and justice issues at the city, state, and federal levels. Our advocacy and broad range of services help our members and affiliates to operate with increasing effectiveness as change agents and social service providers in the city’s most underserved communities.
Guided by our faith and shared values, we seek to build a city of equal opportunity for all families and communities by reducing poverty, advancing upward mobility, and creating shared prosperity.
You can view a list of our members here.
FPWA operates a number of programs and initiatives that are designed to help our faith-based member agencies and partners fulfill their social missions and become effective advocates for their communities.
NEW YORK STATE VACCINE EDUCATION & OUTREACH IN BLACK COMMUNITIES
On July 26, Governor Cuomo announced the allocation of $15 million to address vaccine hesitancy and promote vaccination in communities across New York State that were hardest-hit by the Covid-19 epidemic. FPWA was awarded $5.5 million to support vaccine education and outreach across the state in Black communities.
One week after we received the state’s funding, we released an RFP for faith and community-based organizations across New York State that work with Black communities to apply for grants.
The goal of this effort is to support faith and community-based efforts across New York State and New York City to assess, create and disseminate information that promote vaccine confidence and uptake among vaccine eligible individuals.
You can find out more about the RFP and our grassroots effort here.
For questions, contact Director of Membership and Strategic Partnerships Yolanda Richard.
INTERFAITH CENSUS 2020 COUNT COALITION
Joined by faith to help ensure every New Yorker is counted
The census comes around every 10 years and determines money and power for New York City. But for decades, New York City has had a low census count.
When undercounts happen, Black, brown, immigrant and low-income communities don’t get the funds and representation they are entitled to.
That’s why FPWA launched an all-out effort in 2019 to make sure our city achieved an historically high count for the 2020 Census. FPWA formed The Interfaith Census 2020 Count Coalition alongside Catholic Charities of New York, Council of People’s Organizations, Interfaith Center of New York, UJA-Federation of New York and other key partners which brought faith leaders together to raise awareness about the importance of the census and ensure that New Yorkers in hard to count neighborhoods were properly counted.
When the census concluded in October 2020, over 1,000 faith leaders had reached 146,000 congregation members in twenty targeted zip codes across all five boroughs.
FPWA’s 2020 Census work was so successful for its boots-on-the-ground outreach that this scalable, flexible, and effective program is now the foundation for our vaccine program that’s addressing vaccine hesitancy across New York State. You can find out more about FPWA’s vaccine work here.
For questions, contact Director of Membership and Strategic Partnerships Yolanda Richard.
EMERGENCY FOOD AND SHELTER PROGRAM (EFSP)
Knowing that food insecurity is a major cause of economic anxiety for New Yorkers, FPWA proudly participants as a fiscal conduit in the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP). In this role, we receive and administer FEMA funds (via United Way NYC) to 33 sub-grantees in NYC. The sub-grantees include churches and faith-based organizations running food pantries and soup kitchens across the city. In during the 2022-23 cycle, we will administer approximately $1.3 million in emergency food funding.
