When families face uncertainty, they often turn to the people they trust most: friends, neighbors, and community members who can offer support, share information, and provide a sense of belonging. In Contra Costa County, Rising Juntos, a recipient of the Stand Together Bay Area Fund, helps strengthen those connections and brings residents together to respond to immediate challenges through a community-led approach.
As increasingly aggressive immigration policies continue to threaten the safety and stability of immigrant families, Rising Juntos is helping Contra Costa residents access resources, stay informed, and remain connected to their communities. SFF spoke with executive director Rhea Elina Laughlin about Rising Juntos’ volunteer-powered model, the role trusted relationships play in the success of its work, and how they’re supporting immigrant families in this moment.
What is Rising Juntos and what are the goals the organization aims to achieve?
Rhea Elina Laughlin: Rising Juntos is a community-led organization that advances racial, economic, and health justice across Contra Costa County. For more than 25 years, we’ve organized alongside Black, Brown, and low-income residents to build leadership, identify shared priorities, and take action on the issues affecting their lives. We’re fundamentally rooted in the belief that the people most impacted by injustice hold the wisdom and leadership to drive the solutions.
Today, our volunteer membership includes more than 200 Contra Costa County residents and is made up of 65% Latino and immigrant and 35% African American community members. Together, we work to address the root causes of inequity by advancing public policies and investments that help our communities thrive. Ultimately, our goal is for every child and family to live with dignity, stability, and the power to shape their neighborhoods across Contra Costa County, including Antioch, Bay Point, Pittsburg, Concord, San Pablo, and Richmond.
What is Rising Juntos’ primary focus areas, and how are those priorities shaped by the needs of the community you serve?
Rhea: Our work is driven by what residents tell us they need. The challenges facing our communities are systemic: housing, economic stability, attacks on immigrants, racial inequity, disinvestment, and environmental justice. As community needs to evolve, so do our strategies.
We’re grounded in three core strategies: leadership development, community organizing, and policy advocacy. Our members are out in the community every day, knocking on doors, connecting with their neighbors at community events, laundromats, and grocery stores, and meeting people where they are. That outreach brings people together to share concerns, build leadership, and take action on issues affecting their lives.
Those conversations also shape our advocacy work. Over the last few years, we’ve deepened our housing advocacy, expanded our focus on climate justice and healthy communities, and have grown our immigrant justice work in response to the escalating fear in our communities.
What impacts are you seeing from recent immigration policies, and how is Rising Juntos working to ensure immigrant families have the resources and support they need to thrive?
Rhea: Right now, fear is the biggest challenge facing our immigrant communities. They’re living with anxiety, afraid to go to work, take their children to school, go to their doctor’s appointments, or participate in public life due to ongoing immigration enforcement threats.
Our role is to make sure that when families are afraid or unsure where to turn, they know they’re not alone and have neighbors they can trust. We connect immigrant families to legal resources, provide Know Your Rights education, and share the Stand Together Contra Costa hotline. For many residents, Rising Juntos is a first point of entry, acting as a hub that connects families to resources, provides case management, and ensures they receive ongoing support. Our membership meetings and town halls are also opportunities for people to access accurate information and build community during a time when many feel isolated.
Through the trusted relationships we’ve built through our membership network, we‘re able to stay connected to residents and respond as needed. Because we‘re knocking on doors and showing up in community spaces, dispelling misinformation is a core part of our work. Whether we‘re at parks, laundromats, grocery stores, or talking with people on their doorsteps about the latest headline, we‘re countering harmful narratives and sharing the facts about what‘s happening.
How has support from the Stand Together Bay Area Fund helped to advance this work and the mission of Rising Juntos?
Rhea: The Stand Together Bay Area Fund is critical to our work. Flexible funding allows us to respond to what communities need when they need it. We have used that support to go door-to-door in neighborhoods and meet families where they gather, making sure they know they’re not alone and can access the resources available to them.
Above all, we connect residents to Rising Juntos, which gives them a place of belonging as well as organizer training. We help people understand what has worked when communities organize and where they have the power to create change. Being connected to our network helps shift fear into empowerment by reminding people of their voice and how they can use it.
One example that has stayed with me is a mother who told us she hadn’t left her home in days because she was terrified of what might happen to her family. She didn’t just need information. She needed reassurance that there were people that she could call and a community that would stand with her. We brought her to Rising Juntos where she found a sense of belonging and, most importantly, gained the skills to advocate for herself. Today, she’s at rallies spreading the word with her neighbors and friends, encouraging them to not stay isolated and afraid. She helps others see that while immigration enforcement can feel daunting and overwhelming, they can find strength in community and take action alongside their neighbors.
Our goal is to reach people who may not already be connected to organizations, especially those who are the most isolated, the most marginalized, and the most in need of support.
As communities continue to face new challenges, how has your long-term vision evolved, and what will it take to sustain and grow your impact in the years ahead?
Rhea: The environment has become much more unpredictable. At the same time, communities need us now more than ever as many nonprofits face funding instability, rising costs, and increasing attacks on justice-focused work.
Rising Juntos has become more intentional about building long-term organizational resilience and investing more deeply in our model. That means diversifying funding, strengthening our base, investing in leadership at every level of the organization, and making sure that we are not simply responding to crises, but helping communities address the root causes of the challenges they face.
One of our biggest challenges is balancing flexibility with sustainability. We often have to respond to emerging crises while also staying focused on our long-term vision, the residents’ vision. It’s important for us not to be reactive, but to stay grounded in the wisdom and leadership of our communities. That approach has always been what has made us successful.
For Rhea, creating lasting change requires more than responding to immediate crises. It takes sustained investment, deep community trust, and long-term commitment to helping Contra Costa County residents shape the future of their communities. The impact of that approach can be seen in the people who come to Rising Juntos looking for support and become more deeply connected to their community, their purpose, and one another. By investing in community-led models like Rising Juntos, we can help ensure more immigrant families have the support they need to face challenges, find their voice, and create change alongside their neighbors.
SFF is proud to support Rising Juntos and other organizations providing critical support to immigrant communities through the Stand Together Bay Area Fund. The Stand Together Bay Area Fund brings together donors and community nonprofits to distribute urgent financial assistance and wraparound support to immigrant families at risk of eviction, hunger, and family separation due to increased threats of detention and deportation.
