Agape in Action

by Karen Topakian

That’s what I saw when I exited the bus at 7th and Market the other day. Small gnawed bones. Picked clean of meat. Not yet brittle. Looking very new. The memory of those bird remnants haunted me for days until today, when they made complete sense.

Why today?

Because today is August 6th. And 63 years ago today, in 1945, Hiroshima was transformed into a landscape of charred bodies, human shadows burned into the sidewalk and bones. 140,000 died that day and afterwards. (more…)

Members of ANAKBAYAN-East Bay, Agape Spring 2008 Grant Recipient with Agape Board of Trustee Members Gwyn Kirk and Susan Fang.

The Agape Foundation is once again casting its net out for emerging grassroots organizations that are ready and willing to change the world. We aim to fund community-based efforts towards creating systemic change for social justice. We value self-determination, in which leadership is taken from the communities most affected by the social problems they are working to change. Since our formation in 1969, the Agape Foundation is proud to have awarded more than 12.5 million dollars in the form of grants, loans and fiscal sponsorship to more than 800 grassroots organizations!

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by Nicole Hsiang

June is the month of Pride in San Francisco, during which queer and LGBT people celebrate and make visible their stories, experiences, and communities. It is a declaration that the queer, LGBT identified community will not be silenced, marginalized, or homogenized. Yet to me, Pride isn’t a holiday for people who are queer, but for all people who are proud to be different. Pride is about erasing societal boundaries, forcing each of us to rethink our concept of what is deemed “normal.” (more…)

Fiscal Sponsorship Spotlight: Money to Movements

WTO Protesters to Donate Class Action Settlement Funds through
‘Money to Movements’

In a landmark decision for First Amendment rights, a Seattle civil jury found that police acted unconstitutionally in arresting more than 175 peaceful protesters in downtown Seattle’s Westlake Park, as part of the World Trade Organization protests in 1999, which drew more than 50,000 protestors. Now members of that class-action lawsuit have joined forces to ensure that a portion of settlement funds will be used help to fund organizations carrying on the work of the global justice movement through the Money to Movements project, which is proudly fiscally sponsored by the Agape Foundation. (more…)

by Nicole Hsiang

Here in San Francisco, the hot weather wasn’t the only thing that was abnormal about yesterday, May 15th. Around 11:00 AM, the California Supreme Court ruled that the state may no longer exclude same-sex couples from marriage because it violates the constitution’s guarantee of equality. (more…)

by Karen Topakian

That’s what my father used to say when someone rich did something stupid. Like what the US government is doing now by spending more than $500 billion dollars in Iraq, while destroying that country and ignoring our needs at home.

At Agape, we surely have more brains than money. And big ideas emerge from those brains. Like the idea to fund these four start-up organizations in our Spring 2008 grant cycle (more…)