How Philanthropy’s Helping Build a Cultural Campus for Refugees in San Diego
Backed by The California Endowment and others, the planned campus will feature affordable housing, a market, a hub for nonprofits and community spaces.
Insidephilanthropy
Source: Wayback CDX index
Cars line up at the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego. Credit: Mauricio Covarrubias/Shutterstock
San Diego is home to one of the largest populations of refugees and asylum seekers in California, with some estimates putting the number at about 30,000 refugees living in the area. According to a report from the San Diego Foundation, almost 22% of San Diego County’s population is made up of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers — the ninth-highest total immigrant population among all U.S. counties.
Refugees and migrants in San Diego find themselves struggling with a number of issues: affordable housing, overcrowding, unemployment, lack of educational opportunities and healthcare, and even homelessness. On top of this, the Trump administration’s aggressive moves against immigrants have included executive orders to suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and to terminate parole programs for refugees, enact a travel ban and freeze resettlement funding for new refugees.
We’ve written about how philanthropic funders can push back against a government determined to be unwelcoming to most newcomers. But one approach we haven’t seen as often is to actually build out a physical space for those newcomers — in this case, refugees — to live.
That’s the idea behind a new initiative from the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA), which is looking to transform the experience for hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers in San Diego. Founded in 2014, PANA is a nonprofit hub dedicated to advancing the full civic, economic and social inclusion of all refugees and displaced people, primarily in the San Diego region, but in other parts of California and the U.S., as well.
For the last several years, PANA has been working on developing Global Village: The Refugee & Immigrant Cultural Hub, a community-owned and stewarded campus that will serve as a “lasting, welcoming infrastructure for refugee immigrant communities,” said Ramla Sahid, founder and executive director of PANA. Global Village is being developed in partnership with 16 community-based organizations and more than 1,000 refugees and immigrants. It will provide 167 units of large affordable housing, transitional housing for migrants and asylum seekers, a Global Village Market that will incubate small businesses, a nonprofit hub offering wraparound services, convening spaces for building community, and spaces for shelter, emergency and direct services.
PANA has already purchased the 2.2 acres of land in Mid-City San Diego, where the campus will be built. The project has been divided into three phases — vision, design and development. It is currently in the design phase, with the final phase being projected to take place from 2026 to 2029.
One of the most important aspects of Global Village is that it, like PANA itself, is led by refugees. “If we listen to people and if we listen to their lived experiences and if we can help them be part of a process to design the solutions themselves, I think we would be much better off in this world,” Sahid said. “Too often, what happens is that communities are fighting for little things… but the really big, important things about how our cities are actually designed and the infrastructure and who gets to build and who gets to own land and all of that, people are kept out.”
After acquiring the site, PANA undertook an 18-month, multilingual community visioning process, engaging 2,000 community members in designing a plan for the project.
Global Village is relying on both private and public support. Thus far, it has identified 60% of the funding it needs through affordable housing and government sources. On the philanthropic side, its funding includes $3.2 million from The California Endowment and a $2 million surprise gift from MacKenzie Scott. PANA’s board also seeded $2 million to the project.
“You don’t see these projects come along very often,” said Tara Westman, senior program manager for The California Endowment. “We were convinced that not only the values, the orientation towards how collaborative work would happen in this space, and also PANA’s ability to really engage community members and residents in both the visioning and potentially ownership of the site, was really quite galvanizing.”
Global Village aims to build communities of care for refugees and asylum seekers
For Sahid, it’s important to recognize that refugees, asylum seekers and displaced populations find their way to San Diego because they have been forced to leave their homes through no choice of their own.
“Once they get here… instead of experiencing the values that America espouses in terms of a dignified welcome and standing up for the refugees and welcoming the poor and all the things that [Americans] talk about; instead, what they find themselves is abandoned,” Sahid said. “There’s very little infrastructure actually designed to support them. Nonprofits that are doing resettlement or immigrant rights work are very underutilized… Communities find themselves here with very little support.”
Housing is already a major problem in California, and in San Diego, there is a major shortage of affordable homes. Refugee and migrant families find themselves in severely overcrowded conditions — such as 12 people living in a two-bedroom apartment, Sahid notes — and many find themselves continuously displaced by evictions and gentrification.
“The physical infrastructure isn’t really designed in the U.S. to replicate the mutual care and the community care that a lot of us experience back home…It’s really hard to build that in a country where people find themselves displaced again and again and again because you really don’t have the opportunity to build or rebuild those social connections and that ecosystem of mutual care and community,” Sahid said.
Global Village aims to be able to tackle both issues. Not only will it provide affordable housing for refugee families; thanks to its Global Village Market, public plaza and other areas where people can convene, it will also help build communities and a sense of belonging. On the entrepreneurship side, the Global Village Market will allow workers who want to own and operate their own businesses to do so. And the ecosystem of nonprofits working in the hub will help organize people, build power and develop leaders within the space. According to Sahid, the team is also exploring ways to share governance, resolve conflicts and address any challenges that come up on their own, thus limiting contact with law enforcement.
The California Endowment’s support through its social bond
The California Endowment was among PANA’s first funders and has been partnering with the organization since 2014. In 2020, PANA found itself with the opportunity to acquire land and reached out to The California Endowment for assistance.
“It really came from a real need. [PANA] had lost their space… and like many communities in California, the area was quickly gentrifying, and they were finding that it was difficult to find space. They were getting outbid by other people,” Westman said. “Nonprofits don’t necessarily have that kind of cash on [hand] to be able to act quickly.”
At the time, The California Endowment was in the process of developing its Social Bond, a $300 million investment to advance racial justice and health equity in California over a 10-year period. The Social Bond dates California Endowment envisioned it as a way to move more money to grantees while preserving existing grant commitments. According to Westman, a focus on community-based organizations owning their own space is part of the endowment’s power infrastructure priority area, one of four priority areas for its Social Bond.
“We think that’s actually an equity issue for nonprofits… and in this case, it was just really fortunate timing that PANA was looking to do this,” Westman said. She added that the endowment was drawn not only to the idea of community ownership, but to the multidimensionality of the space and the promotion of collaboration.
Through its Social Bond, The California Endowment was able to award $2.7 million to PANA to help it acquire the land for Global Village. Prior to that, it had awarded a $500,000 grant for pre-development efforts that took place during the pandemic. The endowment also continues to support PANA’s ongoing programmatic work.
Westman said that The California Endowment recognizes that community organizing groups and groups who haven’t always had access to capital are often funded at lower levels than organizations that provide direct services.
“It’s really about evening the playing field for them,” Westman said. “We were already committed to the vision PANA had for working in community, and the voice that community residents would have in their own lives and decisions that affect them. The Social Bond allowed us to make larger and also longer-term commitments to major projects that we thought would advance the areas that we cared the most about.”
The California Endowment’s support for PANA’s Refugee & Immigrant Cultural Hub project long predates the current frightening moment for immigrant and refugee rights. But the endowment, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, has recently taken a vocal stance as the Trump administration targets immigrants in southern California. Joining a number of other major grantmakers, it’s also upped its payout significantly to 10%.
Can Global Village serve as a model for welcoming refugees?
In addition to targeting undocumented immigrants, President Donald Trump has shown an eagerness to halt all types of migration to the U.S., including from refugees and those seeking asylum. Last week, CNN reported that the administration is seeking to dismiss asylum claims for hundreds of thousands of migrants in the U.S. and allow them to be deported. In addition, federal funding for refugee resettlement programs has been cut.
These changes, Westman said, “can dampen the ability of organizations to do their work effectively with the people that they serve.” They’ve also brought about “fear and concerns that people have about showing up for everyday life activities, whether it’s going to school, going to a clinic, grocery shopping, whatever it is. The climate has changed substantially, and is one that doesn’t promote inclusion or belonging or integration into communities.”
As ongoing violent conflicts and ever-worsening climate disasters take their toll, the U.S. will see more people from around the globe coming to seek refuge or asylum. Whether or not they are able to do so remains to be seen, but PANA and The California Endowment both hope Global Village can serve as a model for how cities on international borders, like San Diego, can create a welcoming infrastructure for refugees, one that is community controlled and community owned.
Sahid said that what she described as philanthropy’s lackluster investment in the immigrant rights movement is “embarrassing.” And while she acknowledged that there’s a lot of risk in engaging in a project like this right now, nontraditional projects like Global Village need philanthropic support.
“There are grants and then there are financing models that we can deploy to… literally change the material conditions of whole communities and whole people in neighborhoods. It’s really figuring out ways to unlock program-related investments, unlock their philanthropy, and to be brave with people.”
The California Endowment was able to do this through its Social Bond. Sahid hopes other funders can contribute, as well. Global Village is still looking to raise an additional $54 million to develop its hub.”We don’t have to wait for the kind of future we envision,” Sahid said. “We can actually build that dream right here.”
Editor’s Note (6/30/25): A previous version of this article used a former name for the project, The Refugee & Immigrant Cultural Hub (RICH). The project is now called Global Village: The Refugee & Immigrant Cultural Hub.
