Know Your Rights Camp Provides Over $1.75 Million In Partnerships and Collaborative Grants

Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp Provides Over $1.75 Million In Partnerships and Collaborative Grants to Black and Brown Communities.

New York, NY (July 15, 2020)— Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp (KYRC) continues its mission to create sustainable and strategic charitable partnerships and to make meticulously-vetted and targeted grants to charitable organizations supporting Black and Brown communities with recent contributions by the KYRC of over $1,750,000 million dollars.

KYRC has become frontline defenders for Black and Brown communities who have been disproportionately impacted by each recent crisis. From KYRC’s COVID-19 relief efforts, to the KYRC Legal Defense Initiative for freedom fighters, to the provisions of essential living costs and expenses, to revolving bail funds, KYRC has been hard at work supporting the core principles set forth by its founder Colin Kaepernick.

Our recent efforts have included the following:

1. The Know Your Rights Camp COVID-19 Relief Fund - COVID-19 disproportionately impacts Black and Brown communities. After an extensive vetting process, we deployed over $800,000 in grants to the following organizations:

• Helping Oppressed Mothers Endure (H.O.M.E.)

• Teens Exercising Extraordinary Success (T.E.E.S.)

• 100 Suits

• Access Books

• Connections for the Homeless

• Friends of Island Academy

• Campaign Against Hunger

• Tulsa Dream Center

• Northside Achievement Zone

• Freedom University

• Give Directly

• New Destiny Housing

• Greater New Orleans Foundation Grant

2. The Know Your Rights Camp Legal Defense Initiative - On May 26th, we saw the first Freedom Fighters hit the streets of Minneapolis, MN and arrested for protesting the unjust murder of George Floyd. In rapid response to the community’s needs, we had the KYRC Legal Defense Initiative established by May 28th, providing legal resources to our brothers, sisters and siblings in need. When Freedom Fighters took action nationwide, we immediately responded by expanding our initiative nationwide to provide support for both those arrested as well as those individuals that had their rights violated and the victims of police terrorism. After responding to and providing representation for the hundreds of individuals who reached out for our legal assistance, we formed a sustainable partnership with the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) with a $500,000 collaborative grant. As the start of a unique partnership between KYRC and the NLG, the grant supports the defense of thousands of additional cases of freedom fighters nationwide, aids the efforts of NLG legal observers across the country, and funds the creation of new educational material regarding constitutional rights in multiple languages. The grant will also help the NLG strengthen digital security for mass defense organizing and expand criminal defense preparation and efforts across NLG’s growing infrastructure of 65 chapters and 125 student chapters across the country.

3. The Funds for Freedom (Revolving Bail Funds): Know Your Rights Camp has partnered with Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation and dedicates $1,000,000 towards wealth based detention by matching $500,000 each in grants. To kick off the partnership, KYRC and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation dedicated $200,000 on the first round of grants to revolving community bail funds listed below and will continue to collaborate and identify areas to deploy the remaining funds.

• Atlanta: Reverse the Cycle of Incarceration

• Baton Rouge: YWCA Greater Baton Rouge

• Detroit: Michigan Liberation

• Durham: North Carolina Community Bail Fund

• Fort Worth: United Fort Worth

• Memphis: Just City

• Miami: LGBTQ Freedom Fund

• Nashville: Nashville Community Bail Fund

• New Orleans: Safety and Freedom Fund

• San Antonio: Texas Organizing Project

4. Essential Living Costs / Expenses such as Rent Relief: The Know Your Rights Camp COVID-19 Relief Fund provided three $150,000 grants for a total of $450,000 towards essential living costs and expenses such as rent relief to:

• Give Directly

• New Destiny Housing

• Greater New Orleans Foundation Grant

5. Collaboration with Impossible Foods: Know Your Rights Camp teams up with Impossible Foods to expand its “social good” program supporting food security and social justice. Impossible Foods has already provided relief to more than 750,000 people experiencing food insecurity since the start of the pandemic and the collaboration is on track to donate more than 1 million meals in 2020.

6. Future Planning: In addition to the efforts described above, KYRC continues to plan for future virtual camps during COVID-19 and physical camps when conditions permit. The KYRC Camps are direct service community events and the safety of the community is our top priority. Our past camps have taken place in Oakland, New York, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, Baltimore and Atlanta. We’ve also facilitated one camp internationally in Amsterdam.

KYRC is proud of the breadth and depth of our community impact during these difficult times. We look forward to the partnerships created through the initiatives having both a significant immediate and long term impact. Our efforts to become deeply entrenched in communities and with organizational partners has ensured our ability to maximize the impact on the lives of people living in communities we serve.

Know Your Rights Camp is a fund of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. EIF is a Charity Navigator Four-Star Charity that meets all 20 Better Business Bureau charity standards and carries the GuideStar Platinum Seal of Transparency. All donations are tax-deductible through Know Your Rights Camp’s 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF).