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The history of the Project is the perfect illustration of the words of eighteenth-century essayist D. Everett that, “tall oaks from little acorns grow.”
tributions is fulfilling and affirming nonetheless.
The day that the Gumpert Award was made to the Florence Project a decade ago, a seed was planted. Now, without question, a boun- tiful harvest is being reaped.
And that is a very good thing.
Because justice can’t wait . . .
Joan A. Lukey Foundation President
The Florence Project (then called the Florence Asylum Project) was founded in 1989 with a staff of two in one office working primarily with Central Americans who had fled violence in their home countries in search of protection. The legal services expanded to include not only asylum seekers, but also adult detainees, and later unaccompanied minors, facing deportation. By 2001, the Project added its Integrat- ed Social Services Program to address the myriad of social service needs of its clients. In 2007, the Project launched the Arizona Defending Immigrants Program to provide training and consultations to public defenders relating to the immi- gration consequences of criminal convictions.
In 2012, the College, through the Gumpert Commit- tee and the Foundation, provided a meaningful influx of cash. By 2018, the Florence Project had a staff of seventy operating from three offices.
In 2012, the Emil Gumpert Award Committee selected a non-profit Arizona organization called the Florence Immi- grant and Refugee Rights Project (the “Florence Project”) as the recipient of the Award and its $100,000 grant. (This past year, the Foundation prospectively raised the Gumpert Award to $150,000.) The mission of the Florence Project is
“to provide free legal and social services to detained adults and
unaccompanied children facing immigration removal pro-
ceedings in Arizona.” Its vision is “to ensure that all immi-
grants facing removal have access to counsel, understand their
rights under the law, and are treated fairly and humanely.” our seed likely assisted in attracting other grants and con-
The Gumpert Committee and the Foundation did not need confirmation by another donor that the Fellows’ char- itable dollars were well invested, but the recognition that
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All of this is mere prelude to the extraordinary event recently announced by the Florence Project: MacKenzie Scott, one of the nation’s most generous philanthropists, gifted the Florence Project with $10 million to continue with its critical mission.