29 Rural Grantee Partners Rooted In Wellness & Culture
Leading With Love, Wholeness & Interdependence
The heart of the Women & Girls of Color Fund has always been liberatory leadership. We are grateful to the Leadership Learning Community for their Liberatory Leadership Framework. We share their definition that “Liberatory leadership theory and practice invite us to lead from a place of love, wholeness, and interdependence. By valuing celebration over competition, we are able to access possibilities that can only emerge in community. The practice of liberatory leadership flourishes when we create space for rest, when we address power differentials in service of justice, and when we center those at the margins within our organizations and our work.”
“This grant will change how I view sustainability and capacity for myself as a queer BIPOC leader, which is especially important given our current political reality.”
– Xander Hughes, Four Corners Rainbow Youth Center
Regardless of the issue area or impacted community, we believe the way we work toward a better future matters just as much as the work itself. Over the years, that’s meant funding just about every intersection of work for women and girls of color across Colorado. This past year we saw an orchestrated dismantling of our social safety net. Consequently, nonprofits experienced historic funding cuts and uncertainty as community needs skyrocketed. We didn’t know what to expect from this cycle’s applications. What we found was clarity.
Liberatory Leadership In Practice
Our 2026-27 rural Women & Girls of Color Fund grantees span the breadth of our state with headquarters in 15 different counties, including our highest number ever in Northeast Colorado and the Roaring Fork Valley. Across Colorado, three strategies rose to the top this cycle: Health & Wellness, Rooted in Culture, and Community Organizing & Advocacy. While their missions are varied, they are grounded in the needs of their own communities. But the real throughline for all 29 grantees? Their executive directors lead with love, wholeness, and intentional interdependence.
Health & Wellness
Women & Girls of Color Fund grantees address the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of our communities. They offer care that is culturally responsive, community-driven, and attentive to the ways that gender, race, and geography impact what it means to be well.
Rooted in Culture
Leadership development, workers’ rights, environment, youth diversion programs, health care access, food access and nutrition – whatever their mission, Women & Girls of Color Fund grantees center cultural knowledge, language, and tradition as sources of healing, power, and connection.
Community Organizing & Advocacy
Women & Girls of Color Fund grantees understand that their communities don’t just need services, they need systems change, and the people most impacted are those who need a seat at the table. Power building is a natural evolution of authentically community-led work.
“Esta subvención fortalece el trabajo comunitario que ya está transformando vidas en nuestras comunidades rurales. Nos permite seguir construyendo soluciones desde la gente, con dignidad, acceso y esperanza.”
“This grant strengthens the community-based work that is already transforming lives in our rural communities. It enables us to continue building solutions driven by the people—with dignity, access, and hope.”
– Maria Judith Alvarez Quiroz, Safe and Abundant Nutrition Alliance
$400,000 for Rural Women & Girls of Color
We are incredibly proud to distribute $400,000 in unrestricted, two-year funding for the 2026 rural cycle of the Women & Girls of Color Fund, reaching 29 organizations across rural Colorado and including honoraria to compensate unfunded applicants, because we believe every leader who showed up deserves to be valued for their time and vision.
Unrestricted, flexible funding is itself an act of trust. It allows leaders to deepen their liberatory leadership practices, invest in their infrastructure, and respond quickly when their communities need them most.
And perhaps just as important, it gives them something that is too rarely offered to those doing the hardest work: room to breathe. That breathing room matters now more than ever, as our most vulnerable communities face what will undoubtedly be an extended period of volatility and uncertainty.
“Our team gives so much from the heart and soul for this work. This funding will allow us to invest into those very hearts and souls in a way they and their lineages have deserved for so long – By direct connection to their lands, songs, and traditions.”
– KJ Burrola, Voices of the Land
Liberatory leadership flourishes in a well-funded community. We’re on track for another record breaking grant year, and every dollar reflects someone choosing interdependence over indifference. The leaders are ready. The communities are ready. We just need the resources to match the moment. Join us – donate to the Women & Girls of Color Fund at www.wfco.org/give and reach out to our director of grantmaking, Camisha Lashbrook, at CamishaL@wfco.org to get connected to any of our grantee partners directly.
The next rural cycle will open in January 2028.
Upcoming Front Range Cycle
The first phase of the 2026 Front Range cycle opens on our website on May 20th with an abbreviated application that we call a Letter of Interest or LOI. Learn more and find resources for applicants at wfco.org/WGCF.
2026-27 Rural Women & Girls of Color Fund Grantees
Action Is Safer
Headquarters: Mesa County
Serving: Mesa, Delta, Montrose, and Garfield counties
Our organization exists to provide grassroots advocacy and Mutual Aid to community members to build organizing capacity. We help to build leadership skills and work skills by encouraging community members to claim their seat at the table.
The Alliance
Headquarters: Chaffee County
Serving: Chaffee, Fremont, Saguache, Lake, and Park counties
The Alliance empowers individuals beyond domestic and sexual violence through services, education, and social change.
Center for Healing Trauma and Attachment (CHTA)
Headquarters: Morgan County
Serving: Morgan, Logan, Washington, Phillips, Sedgwick, and Yuma counties
CHTA provides pioneering work in the treatment, wellness, and healing of mental conditions and trauma using brain-based, trauma informed, and experiential therapies and modalities to individuals of all ages.
Circle of Advocacy
Headquarters: Jefferson County
Serving: Jefferson and Park counties
Circle of Advocacy is a volunteer-run organization serving Mountain Jefferson County and Park County. CoA creates a circle of support for survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence and stalking. In partnership with survivors and their loved ones, CoA provides healing-centered, confidential advocacy, crisis intervention, and flexible housing support.
Construyendo Poder
Headquarters: La Plata County
Serving: La Plata, Montezuma, and San Juan counties
We are the only organization in La Plata, Montezuma, and San Juan Counties led by Latine/Indigenous women, providing professional development and healing support in Spanish and Indigenous languages from Mexico, grounded in both Traditional and Western medicine.
El Movimiento Sigue
Headquarters: Pueblo County
Serving: Pueblo County
El Movimiento Sigue is a collective Chicanx and Indigenous community organizing in Pueblo, Colorado taking up space in all spheres of decision making that impact our community.
Four Corners Rainbow Youth Center
Headquarters: La Plata County
Serving: Archuleta, Dolores, Hinsdale, La Plata, Montezuma, Montrose, Ouray, San Juan, and San Miguel counties
To build a brave, anti-racist, anti-oppressive, non-judgmental, and visible space and community for Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual (2SLGBTQIA+) youth, families and allies in Southwest Colorado.
Grupo MAYAS
Headquarters: Pueblo County
Serving: Pueblo County
Somos un grupo de líderes comunitarios voluntarios que promovemos el bienestar emocional y luchamos por los cambios positivos y por nuevas leyes con el fin de que nuestra comunidad beneficie y prospere. Damos educación a la comunidad para que conozca sus derechos para construir comunidades más justas , equitativas, seguras y solidarias.
We are a group of volunteer community leaders who promote emotional well-being and fight for positive changes and new laws in order for our community to benefit and thrive. We provide education to the community so they know their rights to build more just, equitable, safe, and supportive communities.
Hispanic Women of Weld County
Headquarters: Weld County
Serving: Weld County
A Sisterhood that strengthens the community by promoting and generating opportunities for the academic success of Latinas and Hispanic Women.
Ignacio Out and Equal Alliance
Headquarters: La Plata County
Serving: La Plata, Montezuma, and Dolores counties
Our mission is to support, empower, educate and advocate for the Two-Spirit and LGBTQ+ community members, their families and allies in the Southwest, including the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Reservations.
Indigenous Wellbriety
Headquarters: Dolores County
Serving: Dolores and Montezuma counties
Indigenous Wellbriety provides a space for those in substance use recovery or seeking recovery with compassion, cultural identity and utilizing the Wellbriety model by White Bison.
La Alianza
Headquarters: Garfield County
Serving: Garfield and Pitkin counties
LA ALIANZA seeks to establish a durable, self-sustaining Latino/e coalition in the Roaring Fork Valley that strengthens collective impact, reduces systemic gaps, and elevates the health and well-being of Latino/e communities across the three-county region.
La Plaza
Headquarters: Mesa County
Serving: Mesa County
To serve, empower, and cultivate the wellbeing of migrant and immigrant agricultural workers and their families in the Grand Valley.
Lamar Unidos
Headquarters: Prowers County
Serving: Baca, Bent, Otero, and Prowers counties
Lamar Unidos works to build community power by providing culturally responsive services, advancing economic mobility, and supporting immigrant and working families through advocacy, education, and direct support.
The Learning Council
Headquarters: Delta County
Serving: Delta, Gunnison, Mesa, Montezuma, and Montrose counties
Enriching community through education, art, advocacy, food, agriculture and wellness for all.
Native Love
Headquarters: La Plata County
Serving: La Plata County
The mission of Native Love is to empower Native Youth by provided culturally responsive programming. Native Love seeks to preserve culture through providing services to indigenous people and indigenous youth by supporting culturally sustaining practices in the Four Corners region.
Nueva Generacion Folklorico
Headquarters: Mesa County
Serving: Mesa County
Our mission is to provide free, culturally rooted Mexican Folklórico dance education that builds leadership, cultural pride, and community power among youth and families. Through traditional dance, we preserve heritage, develop confident young leaders, and remove financial and systemic barriers so that every child who wants to participate can do so.
Project Protect Food Systems Workers Northeast 2, Northeast 3, San Luis Valley, Southeast, and Western Slope
Headquarters: Alamosa, Delta, Morgan, Otero, and Weld counties
Serving: Alamosa, Baca, Bent, Conejos, Costilla, Crowley, Delta, Eagle, El Paso, Garfield, Gunnison, Kiowa, Larimer, Logan, Mesa, Moffat, Morgan, Otero, Pitkin, Prowers, Pueblo, Rio Grande, Saguache, San Miguel, Washington, Weld, and Yuma counties
Safe and Abundant Nutrition Alliance (SANA)
Headquarters: Garfield County
Serving: Garfield, Eagle, and Pitkin counties
Trabajar mano a mano con diferentes organizaciones y miembros para encontrar soluciones a la inseguridad alimentaria contrayendo lideres en el proceso.
To work hand in hand with different organizations and members to find solutions to food insecurity while building leaders in the process.
San Luis Valley American Indian Center
Headquarters: Saguache County
Serving: Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla, Mineral, Saguache, and Rio Grande counties
The San Luis Valley American Indian Center is committed to promoting the health and wellbeing of American Indians of all Tribal nations in the San Luis Valley by positively promoting and strengthening determinants of health through social unity, health equity, cultural education development, and enhancing self-determination; by being committed to the preservation of Native/Indigenous culture; and by encouraging mutual understanding and respect between American Indians and non-Indians in the region.
San Luis Valley Immigrant Resource Center
Headquarters: Alamosa County
Serving: Statewide
To connect and empower immigrants with resources to achieve legal documentation, fulfill their economic needs, and integrate into the community.
Together We Prosper
Headquarters: Weld County
Serving: Kit Carson, Larimer, Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, Weld, Yuma, and Cheyenne counties
Together We Prosper advances community health and well‑being by addressing the social determinants of health through equitable, person‑centered programs and strategic partnerships. We work to eliminate systemic barriers and expand access to essential resources that improve economic stability, neighborhood safety, and overall well-being, empowering individuals and communities to thrive and reach their full potential.
Valley Settlement
Headquarters: Garfield County
Serving: Garfield, Pitkin, and Eagle counties
Valley Settlement listens to Latina families, and together we create opportunities for early childhood and adult education, connection, and growth, so children and families can thrive.
Voices of the Land
Headquarters: Weld County
Serving: Weld County
Voices of the Land’s mission is to reconnect BIPOC families to the Land and each other through cultural storytelling.
Western Slope DarkSky Reserve Coalition
Headquarters: Montrose County
Serving: Dolores, Ouray, Montrose, and San Miguel counties
The purpose of the Western Slope Dark Sky Coalition is coordinating, collaborating with, and assisting citizen-sponsored groups and Federal, county, and local governments with the intent of preserving the increasingly rare dark, star-filled sky of the Western Slope of Colorado.
