NORTH STAR FUND
COMMUNITY
GALA
APRIL 24, 2025
The Honorees
Every year at our Community Gala, we celebrate the impact of thousands of New Yorkers who do the hard work of grassroots organizing.
We are celebrating all 160+ of our grassroots grantees, who together mobilize tens of thousands of New Yorkers for justice.
Among all these wonderful groups, we highlight three of them with the Frederick Douglass Award.
This is a chance to get a closer look at the realities of grassroots organizing, and all the forms it takes. Here’s your introduction to our 2025 Frederick Douglass Award honorees.
Prepare to be inspired and amazed…
ARAB AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK
The Arab American Association of New York (AAANY) is a women-led advocacy and services organization that both serves and is from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn’s Arab community. For over 20 years, AAANY has provided programming that welcomes immigrants to their new home and empowers them to advocate for and expand their rights. Today, Arab American and Arab immigrant communities are experiencing heightened targeting and attacks. AAANY continues to defend their communities against surveillance and hate crimes. They’re also building in solidarity with coalitions fighting for justice in New York—and beyond.
We’re recognizing AAANY because on both the personal and policy level, they’re improving the lives of Arab American and Arab immigrant New Yorkers.
Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees
Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees (HWHR) has spent over three decades building the collective power of working-class Haitian refugees and championing racial and migrant justice. Their leadership remains crucial as Haitian immigrants face intensified targeting under the current administration. Committed to holistic healing and intergenerational language justice, HWHR has hosted community leadership trainings, worker justice campaigns and immigration legal, community-defense clinics. They believe collective action is the key to communal strength, power and a thriving future. Today, their principled organizing continues to carve a path for the dignity and rights of Haitian communities everywhere.
We are recognizing Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees for their long-time leadership in the movement for migrant justice.
Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison
Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison provides college degrees, life skills coaching and reentry support for currently and formerly incarcerated people. They know their program builds leaders—half their staff are formerly incarcerated and eager to offer a lifeline to others. Their team is also pressing Albany to change sentencing policies and fund access to education in prisons. They’re based in the Hudson Valley and have been growing for nearly 30 years. They work with hundreds of people in five New York prisons and maintain a network of over 2,000 released graduates boasting a less than 2% recidivism rate.
Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison has been a Hudson Valley Organizing Fund grantee since 2023. We are recognizing Hudson Link for their unwavering support of their graduates and their work to get more people access to higher ed.
