Anti-Racism Initiative Finalists

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For decades, systemic discrimination has excluded communities of color from homeownership, a key driver of generational wealth. Minnesota has one of the nation’s largest racial homeownership gaps, disproportionately impacting Latino, Black, and immigrant families.

Serving low- to moderate-income BIPOC households, including Latino, Black, and immigrant families, as well as seniors, NeDA confronts this inequity head-on with a holistic approach that empowers individuals through knowledge, advocacy, and opportunity. The organization is dedicated to dismantling systemic barriers to homeownership and financial stability for BIPOC communities. Through their culturally responsive programs, they directly address racial disparities in housing by equipping families with financial education, homebuyer counseling, and access to equitable lending.

NeDA’s initiatives include HUD-certified homebuyer education, foreclosure prevention counseling, and financial coaching tailored to the unique needs of diverse households. Our lending arm, Centro de Finanzas, is a certified Community Development Financial Institution, ensuring that historically marginalized populations can access fair and affordable mortgage products. Additionally, their real estate development projects increase the supply of entry-level homes, making homeownership attainable for more families.

Beyond direct services, NeDA is a vocal advocate for systemic change. We collaborate with policymakers, community leaders, and partner organizations to influence housing policies that promote equity. By amplifying the voices of those most affected, we challenge discriminatory lending practices and push for long-term solutions to racial disparities in housing.

NeDA’s work is strengthened through strategic collaborations with local and statewide partners committed to closing the racial homeownership gap. Key collaborators include Minnesota Realtors®, the Minnesota Homeownership Center, and Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, with whom we advance affordable housing solutions through new construction, acquisition, and rehabilitation.

Additionally, NeDA works closely with city and state policymakers to advocate for systemic change, ensuring policies prioritize racial equity in housing.

NeDA’s work has had a profound and measurable impact on Minnesota communities, particularly in closing the racial homeownership gap and advancing financial stability for BIPOC households. As a nonprofit of our size, we estimate serving over 1,000 individuals annually through our homebuyer education, financial coaching, and lending services, aligning with similar community-based organizations. Approximately 70 percent of the households we support are BIPOC, and over 80 percent earn at or below 80 percent of the area’s median income.

The organization’s foreclosure prevention efforts have been instrumental in stabilizing communities. In 2023, 40 households facing financial hardship received foreclosure counseling, with 75 percent successfully avoiding foreclosure and remaining in their homes.

Additionally, NeDA’s real estate development initiatives further address Minnesota’s affordable housing crisis. Through strategic partnerships, we have developed and rehabilitated entry-level homes in the East Metro area, including Bluff Homes, Villa del Sol, The Terraces, and Stryker Senior Housing, representing a $55 million investment in housing equity.

The cumulative impact of NeDA’s work is clear: higher homeownership rates, reduced financial disparities, and stronger, more resilient communities. By addressing the root causes of housing inequities, they are not just creating homeowners; they are transforming lives, stabilizing neighborhoods, and ensuring that families of color have the same opportunities to thrive as their white counterparts.

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Through healing justice, cultural organizing, and public policy advocacy, VRJ works to dismantle white supremacy and co-create a world where all communities thrive. The organization’s mission is to build power through collective cultural and political organizing. Their programs — ranging from narrative change and electoral justice to healing circles and grassroots leadership development — emerge directly from community wisdom.

VRJ emphasizes the assets, talents, knowledge, cultures, and traditions of BIPOC communities. One important way they do this is through our Education Equity Parent Fellowship. The organization’s education team provides BIPOC children with the best advocates they could ever hope for: their parents. Parents go through personal leadership development and organizer training to support their children through school, district, and state advocacy for education equity, creating more welcoming and inclusive school environments across the state.

The Centering Community in Policymaking framework and cohort is also a cornerstone of this work, through which VRJ convened a table of ten policy advocates and organizers to reimagine and update the Racial Equity Impact Assessment for the current moment. This updated framework does not have the definitive answers to the pervasive challenges faced in decision-making spaces. It is a tool of accountability and a declaration that those closest to injustice are also closest to the solutions.

Another powerful way VRJ challenges current systems while reimaging new ones grounded in community is through creating our Democracy Toolkit, including a four-week social media guide and a voter engagement guide for use throughout the most recent midterm elections. The content in the toolkit is nonpartisan and intended for 501(c)(3) organizations engaging with BIPOC voters. The tools were used widely to engage BIPOC voters in the election, and they emphasized storytelling, art, and culture in the tools shared with partners.

What makes VRJ unique is their fusion of cultural work with policy advocacy. The organization understands that systems won’t change without narrative change. It’s the reason they center storytelling, art, language, and collective healing in everything they do — from organizing town halls to creating political education toolkits.

VRJ’s healing justice work has provided hundreds of people with culturally specific, trauma-informed spaces to process grief, build resilience, and move toward action. They know that fighting racism requires not just critique, but care. The organization’s narrative justice campaigns have shifted public discourse, from countering criminalizing narratives of Black and brown communities to lifting up joy, ancestry, and resistance as valid and vital. When young people see themselves reflected in this work — not just as participants, but as leaders — it affirms that they belong in the rooms where decisions are made.

During moments of collective trauma, like the 2020 uprising after George Floyd’s murder, VRJ became a home base — mobilizing support, holding healing circles, and continuing to push bold, Black-led demands rooted in abolition and liberation. At its heart, the organization’s impact is this: communities know VRJ is theirs. They are not a service provider. They are a political home.

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Village Arms’ work centers on advocacy, community education, family liaison services, and systems change efforts that challenge punitive child protection practices. The organization brings lived experience, policy expertise, and community accountability into child welfare decision making to counter bias and reduce unnecessary family separation.

The nominated effort is Village Arms’ leadership in advancing and implementing the African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act (AAFPA) — a landmark, first in the nation policy signed into law in Minnesota in 2024. This initiative confronts racism embedded in child welfare systems by reframing “neglect” as a condition rooted in racialized poverty rather than parental failure, and by mandating culturally responsive, family preserving practices.

The initiative demonstrates a deep commitment to pluralism and inclusion by centering the voices and leadership of families most impacted by child welfare intervention. Village Arms’ approach is culturally grounded, strengths based, and community led—ensuring that families are not merely recipients of services, but active participants in shaping solutions.

By pairing policy reform with on the ground family liaison services and cross system collaboration, the organization bridges advocacy and implementation. The AAFPA initiative reframes child welfare from a surveillance-based system to one rooted in family preservation, racial equity, and healing — offering a replicable anti racism model for Minnesota and beyond.

Village Arms collaborates with a broad coalition of partners across Minnesota’s child welfare ecosystem. This includes county child protection agencies, county attorneys, family courts, community-based service providers, and parent advocates engaged in AAFPA pilots and implementation efforts. Key collaborators include Hennepin County and other jurisdictions participating in culturally responsive pilot programs that integrate Village Arms family liaisons into child welfare decision making from first contact. These partnerships enable joint consultations, early family group decision making, kinship first placement strategies, and bias-interrupting practices.

Village Arms’ anti racism work has produced measurable, community level impact across Minnesota. During AAFPA pilot efforts in Hennepin County, over 90% of participating families were able to keep their children safely in their homes. In the limited number of cases where removal was necessary, 100% of children were placed with kin. Among those whose children entered foster care, 100% were reunified within 12 months, with no cases of re-entry into foster care during the pilot period.

These outcomes demonstrate a direct reduction in the racial disproportionality that has long characterized Minnesota’s child welfare system. With support from Village Arms, families experienced fewer repeat maltreatment reports, reduced progression into formal case management, and increased placement with relatives when removal was unavoidable.

Beyond individual cases, Village Arms has influenced systemic change. The passage of AAFPA codified new standards that require acknowledgment of racial disparities, mandate earlier and culturally responsive interventions, and prioritize family preservation over removal. This legislative victory represents a structural shift toward anti racism in child welfare policy.

By aligning policy, practice, and community voice, Village Arms has created sustainable pathways for families to remain intact—and for Minnesota communities to move closer to racial equity and justice.