The CARE Fund received the 2026 John Feather Equity in Aging Award for our partnership with our amazing grantee, Encuentro New Mexico, from Grantmakers In Aging! When we launched the CARE Fund in 2021, equity was so core to our mission that we baked it into our name.

Read the transcript of Anna Wadia’s acceptance speech:

It is such an honor to receive the John Feather Equity in Aging award for our partnership with our amazing grantee, Encuentro. When we launched the CARE Fund in 2021, equity was so core to our mission that we baked it into our name – the Care for All with Respect and Equity Fund.

At the CARE Fund, we believe that equity demands a holistic approach. For all families, care is interconnected and intergenerational. My husband and I raised twin boys with a lot of help from our parents. And now it warms my heart to see those young men helping out with the care of their grandparents.

Yet our philanthropic and government programs are siloed. With care at the crux of systems of oppression by gender, race, age, ability, immigration status and family structure, our siloed care systems reinforce inequality. People of color make up a disproportionate share of sandwich generation caregivers, caring for both older adult loved ones and young children. Due to legacies of discrimination, they are more likely to be in low-wage jobs that do not offer paid sick days or family and medical leave. And the lack of support for child care and paid leave ripples across a lifetime, greatly increasing gender and racial disparities in the economic security of older adults.

At the same time, the professionals caring for our loved ones are predominantly women and disproportionately women of color and immigrants. They are among the lowest compensated workers in our economy, rarely receiving the benefits they need to care for their own families. And these workers’ lives are becoming even more precarious, as their ability to work and receive health, nutrition and child care support is being threatened.

That is why the CARE Fund supports movement and power building across care issues – from home and community based services for older adults and people with disabilities, to paid leave for family caregivers, to universal child care, and improving the jobs of careworkers. We are supporting the movement to be stronger together by breaking down silos in philanthropy – very much in line with the theme of this conference.

We are so grateful to count funders in aging among our partners – both those focused locally like our hosts at the Next50 Foundation, as well as national partners like the John A Hartford Foundation. They are joining forces with funders focused on child care, workers rights, and gender, racial, disability and economic justice to build the power of those most impacted by our care crisis to advance and defend federal and state policies and programs.

Key to building power are organizations deeply rooted in their communities, like Encuentro. As Claudia Medina, a co-founder of Encuentro will share, the organization addresses equity both by improving the livelihood of immigrant careworkers and by increasing the supply of culturally and linguistically responsive care for New Mexico’s rapidly growing and increasingly diverse older adult population. As an immigrant and worker-centered organization, Encuentro not only provides support to the development of workers, but also addresses the challenges that individuals and families face in accessing care that meets their needs.

So Encuentro models the type of win-win solutions we are proud to support at the CARE Fund. They are simultaneously improving the lives of older adults, their loved ones and the professionals who care for them.