With the most recent proposed federal funding cuts to social services, including Medicaid, SNAP benefits, public health, and clean energy, we can only anticipate the impacts this will have on communities across New Mexico. While a complete analysis has not emerged, we do know that budgets tell stories and reveal values. We also know that New Mexico receives 72% of Medicaid funding from the federal government (the third highest amount in the nation). Medicaid covers 66% of all New Mexican children, and approximately 43% of the overall state budget comes from federal funding. Meanwhile, as the only place-based intermediary that invests in gender justice and healing, NMW.O’s response to this moment is to deepen our investments and “stay the course,” when it comes to supporting our communities. 

NMW.O’s grantmaking becomes more meaningful in the face of what has been coined the ‘Big Bad Billionaire Bill,’ in which "the lowest tenth of earners will lose money…while people in the top five percent of earners will see a tax cut of $117.2 billion." The role of NMW.O’s grantmaking is to nourish the soil in which the work of gender justice and healing occurs. This spring alone, our dollars have been working to uplift and support the leadership of adolescent girls and gender nonconforming youth around the state. Our healthy masculinities grants have supported organizations that engage men and boys in discussions around gender and masculinity. Our grantmaking reflects what we value most: our belief in community-rooted solutions, collective care, and liberation. 

Your investment in NMW.O is more than a contribution, it is a values statement. Thank you for your ongoing commitment to gender justice and healing in New Mexico and for staying the course alongside us. Your partnership and support have never mattered more.  

We’re proud to announce our 2025 spring cohort of Adolescent Girls of Color (AGOC) multi-year grants. We continue to invest in these powerful organizations that are committed to social justice, provide culturally relevant healing practices, and build leadership pathways for and with girls and gender-expansive youth of color across New Mexico.  

These grants reflect a core truth: investing in young people of color is investing in the future of our communities. Across the state, youth are imagining and building new worlds rooted in justice, creativity, and connection, thanks to your support. 

Our AGOC grantee partners are nurturing that power through transformative programs from healing retreats to expressive arts and anti-racist organizing programs, to gardening, mindfulness, social-emotional wellness workshops, and digital storytelling programs. This work gives adolescent girls and gender-expansive youth of color space to connect and collaborate, provides opportunities to deepen relationships, creates leadership models beyond harmful patriarchal structures, and supports AGOC leaders as change agents, creating a more just future for themselves and our communities. 

We invite you to learn more about these visionary efforts and the incredible work of the AGOC spring cohort by visiting our AGOC grantee partner page.

Earlier this month, NMW.O was honored to co-host a full-day retreat for our Healthy Masculinities Community of Practice, including deep land-based reflections, shared learnings around masculinities and gender, and intentional collective care for our partners. It’s been over seven years since NMW.O first gathered with a few of our incredible community partners in 2018 to explore what it might look like to engage around the topic of masculinities with a multi-gendered and multi-issue-focused collective of organizations statewide. 

In those seven years, we have found a rhythm as a statewide community of practice that has created an incredible Healthy Masculinities Toolkit, continues to meet virtually quarterly, and meets annually in person to connect, skill-share, and build this collective work. We are grateful for our partnership with Ian Esquibel of Oakhill Coaching and Consulting, who has stewarded this work with care, and to all the organizations who continue to bring their wisdom, authenticity, and commitment to gender justice to this space. We learn so much from you! 

Stay tuned for an exciting healthy masculinities announcement about some of the work we’ve been up to! 

In a moment marked by political upheaval and coordinated attacks on gender justice, we believe that coming together is itself a form of resistance and an act of care. That’s why we are hosting Cultivating Communities of Care—a series of lunchtime gatherings where we connect, reflect, and dream alongside those invested in a more just New Mexico. 

These community conversations are part of how we “stay the course” in the face of national funding rollbacks and harmful rhetoric. In our most recent gathering, we shared about our Healing Award program that invests in healing and community care as both a social change strategy and as an expression of a politics of love in this moment defined by a politics of exclusion. We collectively grounded ourselves in what sustains us: relationship, reflection, and shared action towards our visions of healing and collective care. 

Our upcoming gatherings will take place on August 20 and November 12. We hope you’ll be part of this ongoing conversation—one that reminds us that movements are built not just through policy but through presence and relationships. 

Reach out to Rachel Rodriguez, Development Director, at rachel@newmexicowomen.org for more information. 

With gratitude for your support,



Sarah Ghiorse

President & CEO