Eric Christopher Webb, DDiv., CPLC
Director of Communications
/Editor of The Sphinx
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
ewebb@apa1906.net
Cell: 443-635-5911
Wednesday, August 7, 2024
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Launches $100,000 Black Male Voter Mobilization Fund for Chapter Micro Grants
BALTIMORE, MD — Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. is providing up to $100,000 in micro grants to its chapters to support voter education, registration and mobilization efforts for the 2024 United States Election Cycle as a part of one of its oldest general programs, ‘A Voteless People is a Hopeless People’ (VPHP).
The announcement came during its ‘A Voteless People is a Hopeless People’ (VPHP) Town Hall Meeting last night, and in coordination with the Council of Presidents of the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) massive voter mobilization campaign. Since the 1930s, VPHP has been in effect as a fraternity general program but shifted its focus to i.e. political awareness and empowerment in the 1990s.
“At no time in our history has exercising our right to vote been more critical with our very Democracy at stake,” said Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. General President and NPHC Council of Presidents Chairman Dr. Willis L. Lonzer, III. “With continued efforts to disenfranchise Black voters, Alpha Phi Alpha as well as the other Divine 9 organizations committed to an historic massive, coordinated voter education, registration and mobilization campaign that exercises the collective strength and influence of the more than 2.5-million-member network of the Divine 9. The “D9 is Stronger Together.”
Each chapter, that applies and is selected, must offer program activities in partnership with a local NPHC chapter, civil rights or advocacy partner, across any of the strategic VPHP program areas, including public issues forums, candidate forums, and/or debate watch, voter and civic education, voter registration drives, and “Get-Out-The-Vote’ programs.
Last month, the Fraternity’s General Board of Directors approved the establishment of the new micro grant fund during its historic 2024 Constitutional Convention in Chicago, IL.
For more detailed information on micro grant criteria and application, visit: www.bit.ly/APAMicroGrant
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About Alpha Phi Alpha
The Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African American men, was founded on December 4, 1906, at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY and is headquartered in Baltimore, MD. The Fraternity has long stood at the forefront of the African American community’s fight for civil rights through Alpha men such as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; late former Congressman Adam Clayton Powell; late former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; legendary activist, actor and performer, Paul Robeson, former Ambassador Andrew Young; late former Senator Edward Brooke; scholar, Cornel West; Senator Raphael Warnock; Congressman Steven Horsford, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus; General CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; six other members of the U.S. Congress, numerous state, and local lawmakers across the United States, as well as President of Liberia, His Excellency Joseph Boakai, Sr. The fraternity, through its more than 720 college and alumni chapters and general-organization members, serves communities in the United States, and other parts of North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.