NEW ORLEANS — When Nadia Sanchez started her New Orleans East non-profit five years ago, she knew it would take a lot of work.
“It’s worth it. The impacts are worth it,” said Sanchez.
Like at most non-profits, those impacts from Love Your Neighbor NOLA wouldn’t be possible without financial support. That makes days like Giving Tuesday so meaningful to Sanchez.
“I don’t think people understand how limited the grant funding is, especially for new non-profits. You’re heavily reliant on individual donors and people who just believe in the work that you’re doing,” said Sanchez.
Those donations have helped Sanchez expand her mission to stabilize families and stop cycles of violence.
“So mental health resources, job readiness, parent education, teaching them how to break those cycles that they’re used to seeing in their own families, to create healthier families,” said Sanchez.
For Sanchez, it’s personal. Her mom was killed during a New Orleans carjacking in 2018.
“I don’t want any family to experience what I did, losing my mom to violence. I don’t want any family to experience what her perpetrators’ families experienced, losing their children to jail,” said Sanchez.
That mission takes money. Giving Tuesday has become one of the biggest fundraising days of the year for many non-profits across the country. Last year, it raised $3.1 billion, but it’s not all about money.
“It's not called fundraising Tuesday. To be honest, it's giving Tuesday, and while you will see lots of organizations in need and kicking off their giving season by asking for donations, it's an opportunity to take a scan of all the assets you have to give. It could be a talent or a skill, or a good, an item, that you could give to others,” said Celeste Flores with givingtuesday.org.
“It goes directly back to the community,” said Sanchez.
Sanchez says she’ll use donations from Giving Tuesday to start a community resilience workshop.
“That’s going to include parent education, specialists coming into our space, mental health professionals coming into our space and doing classroom-style informational sessions with our families,” said Sanchez.
If you’d like to donate directly to Love Your Neighbor NOLA, click here.
To donate to non-profits through the Greater New Orleans Foundation, click here.
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