A slightly blurred collage of community photos. A march with yellow signs, two people hugging, a meeting, and a person talking on a megaphone are visible. There is a transparent blue overlay and a semi-transparent lighter blue box with the words "Headwaters Foundation for Justice e-newsletter" in black.

What's New this Month?
A Look Inside our New Shared Leadership Model

At the end of June, we welcomed Migdalia Loyola Meléndez to the Headwaters team as our second Co-Executive Director! Since then, she’s been busy getting to know Headwaters, our team, and our incredible grantees working to build a more just Minnesota. 

Want to get to know Migdalia? Check out our new video to learn how she and Bilal are working together to lead Headwaters with care, creativity, and accountability.  

🔗 Watch: Meet Migdalia!
Celebrating our Development Committee

We are thrilled to welcome both old AND new friends to the Development Committee as we kick off the new fiscal year. At Headwaters, we're intentional about pulling together a volunteer group that is multi-generational, cross-class, and diverse in gender and race so that we engage a powerful collective of our communities. Our committee members also cover an exciting breadth of experiences, from being business owners to artist organizers to development staffers to working in start-ups. Join us in welcoming our Development Committee and keep an eye out for more to come about their work!

🔗 Make a gift ​to support thei​r work
Meet Leeya, September's Featured Artist

Leeya Rose Jackson explores various themes of identity, with a focus on Blackness, neurodivergence, femininity, and queerness. Her inclusive and uplighting artistic style is characterized by vibrant celestial and floral/botanical patterns, organic shapes as well as magical realism motifs. A multidisciplinary artist, Leeya works as an illustrator, painter, printmaker, creative director, filmmaker, and designer.

🔗 Learn more about Leeya
Rapid Response Fund: Cycle 2 is Open

The Rapid Response Fund supports strategic organizing around new, rapidly emerging, or unexpected legislative or policy developments, events, and political moments. There are 8 rounds of grantmaking in the 2025-2026 fiscal year. The deadline to submit an inquiry form for Cycle 2 is Wednesday, September 24th, at 5 p.m. Details at our website.
 

Community Events

💃 THE FUNCTION
Saturday, September 13 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.

THE FUNCTION is Public Functionary’s annual world-building, abundance-making, dream-living, money-raising art party. And this year taking place in open air! We're expanding outside our galleries and into the NKB courtyard campus with multiple curated stages, installations, and moments of joy. Through celebration, we aim to raise funds through tickets sales to sustain our year-round artist support platform and the PF Studios program at Public Functionary.

✨ September Political Pedagogy
Tuesday, September 16 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Join Healthcare Reparations Cooperative for "Lineage Healing: Ancestral Care in Health." Political Pedagogy is then a facilitated time to hold the truth – that another world is possible. These two-hour hybrid sessions use joyful arts-based activities to tackle complex visioning in playful ways. Contrasting a classroom, sessions are curated as a collaborative workshop in the practice of a pedagogy that values the method of collective wisdom and processed learning. Each session asks participants to cultivate an action to bring back to their community as a method of dissemination and power building. 

🦋 Ananya Dance Theatre Presents: SWAPNŌ JHNĀP: DREAM JUMPING
Friday and Saturday, September 19-20 from 7 p.m.

SWAPNŌ JHNĀP: DREAM JUMPING faces the ongoing chaos and escalating destruction of our Common Life by bringing connectivity and liberation out of the dream world and into reality. As the dancers travel through portals that cross time cycles and spacescapes, they integrate vital medicine and patchwork a methodology of dreaming that literally brings the desired world closer. We discover wisdom and connectivities inside the depths of oceanic grief, in the shared rhythms of a dance club, in the hatching of mythical creatures, in the rubble of war-torn landscapes, and inside quantum entanglements of movement and breath.

👒 Foster Get Together and Community Threads & Treasures!
Wednesday, September 24 from 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Only open to MN Fosters: Hybrid Meet and Greet with new Executive Director (and "shop" at Commuinty Threads and Treasures!) This is a hybrid community connection from 4:30-5:30 pm while we share dinner and conversation. At 5:30, we’ll open up Community Threads and Treasures, and those on zoom can have some additional chat time with our new executive director before they join in the clothing adventures. 

🐦‍🔥 Wings of Unity: A Celebration of Nature & Inclusion with UBC
Saturday, September 28 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The Urban Bird Collective is hosting our second annual gala! This year's theme is "Wings of Unity: A Celebration of Nature and Inclusion." We hope you'll join us in celebrating the UBC and supporting our work and mission. We'll have food, nature walks, a silent auction, costume contest, and more... Feeling creative? Gala attendees are invited to wear a bird-themed costume, or make one at the event, and enter the costume contest to win a prize.

🥞 Rise for Change
Wednesday, October 1 from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.

The Link's Rise for Change Breakfast raises awareness and funding for critical issues facing youth in our community. This year, Rise for Change will focus on examining the root causes of youth crime—too often connected to poverty, homelessness, and exploitation—and on breaking down the harmful stigmas that young people face. The program will feature a dynamic keynote from a community leader and a powerful panel of youth and adults with lived experience in the justice system. Together, we can help shift the narrative around youth crime and invest in The Link’s programs that empower young people to heal, grow, and thrive. Tickets start at $50 and include coffee, tea, and a plated breakfast.

🪄 Making Waves: An SEA-Led Creativity Festival 
Friday and Saturday, October 3-4

When we consider the 50 years of end of the Wars in Southeast Asia and 50 years of the first Southeast Asian family making Minnesota their home, we often see and hear the same narratives presented. We at The Paper Lantern Project are hoping to shift the focus to the people often not recognized and to uplift the creativity of our communities. This festival an all day conference where participants will be participating in up to 4 workshops all led by Southeast Asian Artists of the diaspora. Expect to learn about Southeast Asian Art practices, explore your own stories, and walk away with creative pieces.

🌳 Deep Rest for Resistance: Celebrate ROOT
Thursday, October 9 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Building a just world is a marathon, not a sprint. Cultivating rest, spaciousness, and creativity isn’t just good practice; it’s a strategy for survival and radical renewal, giving us the freedom to dream, invent, and build the world we deserve. Join us online to learn about ROOT, practice rest, and hear from a panel of our rest-practitioner partners.

🌱 2025 Native Cancer Care Conference
Tuesday, November 4 from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

A journey of reclaiming Native health and addressing cancer with our relatives, hosted by the American Indian Cancer Foundation. Conference includes expert speakers, interactive workshops, cultural learning, community connections, and addressing cancer inequities in Indian Country. Come learn, share, and be a part of a growing movement to strengthen native health and address cancer inequities for future generations! Registration is now open.

Job Opportunities from the Headwaters Community

MIGIZI Communications
🔸 Director of Development and Communications
Salary: $70,000 - $80,000

MIGIZI’s mission is to provide a strong circle of support that nurtures the educational, social, economic, and cultural development of American Indian youth. We are passionate about the success of our young leaders and make sure resources are available while using our voice to advocate for equitable education for our community. Our vision is for American Indian youth to be acknowledged and honored for their sacred gifts and boundless potential – which they share – as leaders – with their communities and nations. When you join the Circle, you join a tradition in investing in our future leaders for generations to come.

InquilinXs UnidXs por Justicia (United Renters for Justice)
🔸 Lead Policy Organizer
Base Salary: $58,000

InquilinXs UnidXs por Justicia (United Renters for Justice) (IX) was founded to build tenant power to change the housing system in Minneapolis. We are a multi-identity/gender, multi-language, and multi-cultural organization. IX was founded by Latinx community members to work with renter communities most oppressed by high rents, bad conditions, and intimidation by landlords in the city.

Mary's Pence
🔸 Executive Director
Salary: $85,000 - $110,000

Mary's Pence provides funding to women’s organizations working on social justice issues in the United States, Mexico, and Central America. We support women working on long-term systemic change through social and economic development. Mary’s Pence works through two programs, both focusing on capacity building and funding of women’s organizations. These two programs meet the unique needs of both women in the United States and in Central America and Mexico.
Share your events and jobs in our newsletter

Submitting your event or job posting is easy! Use the link below to fill out our 60-second form. Our newsletters go out on the 2nd Wednesday of each month. This link (bit.ly/HFJnews) will be active for all future newsletters - so keep it handy!

🔗 Submission Form
Donate
Unsubscribe
2801 21st Ave S, Ste 132B | Minneapolis, MN 55407