JACKSON HEIGHTS — An organization dedicated to helping recent female immigrants become leaders has received a boost from The New York Community Trust.
Desis Rising Up and Moving, or DRUM, was awarded $40,000 this year, its first grant from the foundation.
DRUM was founded in 2000 in Jackson Heights as a resource for the South Asian community, specifically with female immigrants.
The money from the grant, to be spent over 18 months, will help fund the Nari Women’s Leadership Project, which helps female immigrants share their experiences and become mentors to one another.
It’ll be used to train at least 160 girls and women, organize monthly workshops and become involved with local government, the group said.
Another local Jackson Heights organization, Queens Community House, also received $40,000 to help with its special programming for LGBT seniors in the neighborhood.
The group, which has bounced around the neighborhood after it was left without a home from the Bruson Building fire in 2014, will use the funds to plan programming for seniors.
Funding for these organizations, and others in Queens, comes from the generosity of Ruth Adel Torgerson Leffler, a former lawyer and golf star who wanted to give back to her home borough.
Leffler was raised in Kew Gardens and graduated from Smith, NYU and Columbia Law. She was also an avid golfer, winning the Long Island women’s golf championship at 27, according to the New York Community Trust.
She left $6 million to the Community Trust upon her death in 1993 — and since then it’s helped dozens of groups in Queens.
Other Queens groups to benefit this year include Planned Parenthood, which was given $125,000 to expand reproductive health services for girls and young women at its new clinic in Long Island City, and $100,000 to the Trust for Public Land to support the QueensWay project.
The Greater Jamaica Development Corporation was also given $150,000 to develop living and work spaces for artists.
