Designed to develop future leaders in the U.S.-México border region, ICF started the Las Californias Youth Leadership Program (LCYLP) this year in partnership with the International Studies Project (ISTEP) at San Diego State University, LEAD San Diego, and La Fundación Internacional de la Comunidad, A.C. (FIC). LCYLP seeks to promote a greater understanding of the border region among selected high school students from San Diego and Tijuana through a year long program of educational enrichment, mentoring, job shadowing, and community service projects.

In the first year, 13 highly-accomplished high school seniors from San Diego and Tijuana were selected
for the program. They have traveled to Mexico City, met with civic and government leaders on both sides of the border, and will travel to Washington DC in Spring 2004. 

ICF plans to have up to 25 students enrolled in LCYLP every two years, giving our donors the opportunity to interact with the region’s future leaders as advisors, mentors, educators, and as philanthropists.

America is a country of immigrants. Today, one in five Americans was either born in a foreign country or has a parent who was.

ICF's "Ties that Bind Us" Initiative works with Latino and Asian American donors to help them make an impact in their homeland through charitable giving. Through on-going research, donor dialogues and donor trips, the program also seeks to better inform non-immigrant Americans donors about potential philanthropic opportunities in migrant-sending regions in Asia and the Americas.

In the Americas, ICF helped a group of 50 Oaxacan-born migrant farm workers from San Diego's North County make their first grant to a micro-credit program in the town of El Trapiche in the Central Valley of Oaxaca. Another grant from the Rockefeller Foundation enabled the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana and UCLA to study San Diego's Mexican migrant community and its growing needs.

In Asia, ICF donors Robert and Joyce Chang are supporting scholarships, teachers’ awards and providing school supplies to a total of 31 migrant schools in Shanghai. ICF also provided charitable support to the Chinese Immigrant Services Network International (CISANI), assisting this global network of Chinese immigrant-serving organizations to explore long-term sustainability through endowment building.

THIS PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT: LCYLP students at Mexican Senate, Mexico City, México; Town of El Trapiche, Oaxaca, México.