I attended and live tweeted this morning’s announcement at the JW Marriott in Washington, D.C., on behalf of EJS, which is a Kellogg Foundation grantee.

Children of color are over-represented among the 29 million low-income children and families in this country, particularly among families living in concentrated poverty. According to data from the National Center for Children in Poverty, about 61 percent of African American, 62 percent of Latino, 57 percent of Native American, 58 percent of children with immigrant parents, 30 percent of Asian American children and 26 percent of white children live in low-income families.

“The Kellogg Foundation’s vision is for a nation to marshal its resources to ensure that all children in America have an equitable and promising future,” said Sterling K. Speirn, president and CEO. “That is simply not the case in many communities across the country today. The goal of the America Healing initiative is to help make that vision a reality by engaging communities and supporting them in the hard work of racial healing and addressing the effects of historic and contemporary structural issues, such as residential segregation and concentrated poverty.”

During the first phase of America Healing, 119 organizations will receive grants totaling $14,613,709 specifically to support community-based organizations’ healing efforts among racial and ethnic groups that address historic burdens, disparities and barriers to opportunity. Their efforts will focus within local communities to increase opportunities for children in education, health and economic areas. Grantees represent 29 states and the District of Columbia and all racial and ethnic population groups.

To highlight the desire of communities to work together on racial healing, the foundation created a signature video (embedded below), which captures the spirit of the initiative.

“The mission of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation is to help communities create conditions that propel vulnerable children to succeed as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society,” said Dr. Gail Christopher, vice president of programs. “Because children of color are so disproportionately represented in low-income families and impoverished communities, realizing our mission requires addressing historic and current structural barriers to opportunity, such as exposure to environmental toxins and under-resourced schools, which are a direct result of past policies and practices of racialization and privilege.”

Christopher said that the overwhelming response to the initial phase of the initiative – there were nearly 1,000 responses to the request for racial healing proposals from both urban and rural communities – demonstrates that “we have tapped into a movement in this country, a reservoir of good will and eagerness to have the hard conversations, and to do the difficult work of addressing long standing issues that have needlessly divided communities from coast to coast.”

“America Healing seeks to capture the spirit of our times and re-invigorate our country’s historic commitment to ensure that every child, no matter what race or ethnicity, develops their full potential to lead a healthy, educated and economically prosperous life,” said Speirn.

“At a time when our nation shows disturbing signs of becoming more polarized, this courageous effort by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to promote healing within local communities is sorely needed. It reminds us of our true democratic ideals as a nation and of the inalienable right guaranteed by our founding documents to the free and unfettered opportunity that every human being deserves,” said U.S. Representative John Lewis (D-GA), who spoke at the launch event, shown at the podium in above photo with Dr. Christopher seated to the right.

Other phases of the initiative will seek to curtail racism in the media, the environment, education, housing, health and criminal justice systems, with an emphasis on expanding opportunities for all children.

“We have an opportunity to make dramatic progress in healing our nation,” Christopher said. “As a country, just as we as we have done in previous periods in our nation’s history, we must shine a light on racism so that we can put its effects on children and communities behind us.”

Moreover, the America Healing initiative complements the racial equity approach in all of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation grantmaking directed at supporting vulnerable children, their families and communities. The new initiative will continue to focus on issues at the core of structural racism and will align with the foundation’s program areas: Education and Learning; Food, Health and Well-being; and Family Economic Security.

“With almost a thousand applicants, there’s no denying that there is a tremendous desire for this kind of work and initiatives like America Healing are urgently needed,” said Speirn. “Our goal is to breathe life back into the effort to abolish structural racism, and to help America achieve strength and prosperity through racial equity.”

In an effort to showcase the many outstanding grant proposals, and because the foundation could not fund all 1,000 projects, they have created and will publicize a catalog of all proposals, including both the funded and unfunded. The goal is to help connect organizations with potential sources of funding and to help meet the extraordinary demand for racial healing. To view the catalog, please visit http://www.wkkf.org/racial-equity/racial-equity-catalog.aspx.

To learn more about America Healing, please visit http://www.americahealing.org.

A Black man born in Hawai’i with an Asian sister was sworn into office Tuesday as our President. He took the oath of office on the same bible used by Abraham Lincoln for the exact same oath 148 years ago, realizing the dreams of countless African Americans and others who previously never imagined this moment.

President Barack Obama now leads our country into uncertain and troubled times. But he begins work on our nation’s ills with unprecedented numbers of Asian Americans in substantive roles in this Administration.

Japanese American Peter Rouse is White House Senior Adviser. Chinese American Chris Lu is Cabinet Secretary. Former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki is Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Nobel prize winner Steven Chu is Secretary of Energy.

We now have a First Family that includes Asian Americans. The President’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, is half Indonesian. Her husband Konrad is Chinese American. Their daughter Suhaila is hapa.

This roster of Asian names is significant because the halls and backrooms of power in our nation’s capitol have for too long been dominated by monochromatic men. It does not mean we have arrived. It means we’ve only just begun.

For many of us, the most urgent unresolved Asian American and Pacific Islander issues are not always those that touch our everyday lives, but our desire to resolve those issues reflects our belief that an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere. We must reach outside of our individual realities to understand the plight and tragedy that prevents millions of Americans, Asian Pacific or not, from realizing their true potential.

Our government’s brutal treatment of undocumented immigrants is not just a Latino issue. When Sin Yen Ling and the Asian Law Caucus work to recruit more attorneys to represent victims of raids against immigrants in homes and workplaces and when Sophya Chum and Khmer Girls in Action fight against the unfair deportation of Cambodian youth, we see that immigrant rights is as much our battle.

Attempts to legalize discrimination against gays and lesbians through constitutional amendments to ban marriage are not just LGBT issues. When Amos Lim, Tawal Panyacosit, Jr. and Chinese for Affirmative Action work tirelessly in Asian American communities to replace biogtry with understanding and tolerance, we see that marriage equality must also be our goal.

An article titled “Why I Hate Blacks” – filled with blatant racism and ugly stereotypes published in a prominent Asian American newspaper was not just an African American issue. When David Chiu, now president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, attorney Dale Minami and other Asian American leaders worked immediately to have AsianWeek apologize for the column and fire the writer and the editor responsible, we saw that the elimination of racism against Blacks and all people of color must be our dream.

All of these issues and more must be part of contemplating our renewed America with Barack Obama as our President. He cannot fight injustice alone. Let’s stand with him.