Pictured: Astraea staff during our pre-pause video chat retreat

Hello!

Astraea will be taking an organization-wide pause from July 1 – July 15, 2020. As we continue our culture change and organizational transformation work, we are mindful of the importance of slowing down and making intentional time and space to reflect. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have made this need to pause and replenish our minds and bodies all the more urgent and necessary, so that we are able to return to Astraea, to our grantees, and our supporters rested, rejuvenated, and ready to continue the joyful struggle.

Astraea staff will not be working between July 1 – 15, 2020. We will resume our regular working hours on July 16, 2020.

As the pandemic continues to impact communities already affected by systemic inequalities, we are called upon to deepen our support for grantee partners working to care for their people. COVID-19’s impacts are exacerbated by the longstanding pandemic that is anti-Black racism and white supremacy. Astraea stands in solidarity with the recent powerful uprisings against the racial injustice that threatens Black lives, and we continue to fuel LBTQI BIPOC activists whose visions and labor are building more just futures for us all.

We opened our pause this afternoon with a session led by Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams, a Black writer, activist, Zen priest, and trusted friend to Astraea. Reverend Angel will be joining us again at the end of the pause, guiding us into reflections and practices to consider the Astraea we want to become.

This pause period is an opportunity for Astraea staff to step away from our desks, and reflect on how we can step more into “being” as opposed to “doing.” It is also a time for us to examine our own practices as we work to be an anti-racist organization and vision the Astraea we know is possible—one that is truly anti-racist, intersectional, feminist, queer, and international. As a queer feminist fund, we owe everything to Black, Indigenous, Women of Color and Global South feminists who built the intersectional vision of liberation that is at the very core of our mission.

Ultimately, we hope that this pause will enable us to show up at Astraea, in philanthropy, for our grantee partners, and in our communities in even more powerful ways.

In Solidarity,
The Astraea Staff

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Astraea’s blog, Collective Care Blog: Building the Power & Resilience of LBTQI Movements Now & for the Long Haul, is Astraea’s response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. As a feminist LBTQI funder, we believe it is our responsibility to shed light on the ways our communities are particularly impacted by the crisis, share insights around the criticality of healing justice and collective care, as well as the ways in which we’re digging deep to keep shifting power to the grassroots in meaningful and sustainable ways.

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