The SABA Foundation Commitment

Learn From Each Other | Champion Justice | Serve Together

We support South Asian communities in North America with roots in countries of South Asia including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives, and Sri Lanka.

If you have any questions about donating, please contact us at ExCo@sabalegalfdn.org

What We Do - Mission Statement

The South Asian Bar Association of North America Foundation supports access to justice through grant making and educational programming, by fostering collaboration among nonprofit organizations serving South Asian communities in North America, and by advancing causes important to the communities we serve.  

We do this by:

  • Grant Making 

Each year, the Foundation distributes funding to community-based organizations and other non-profits that provide much needed services to South Asian communities in North America.  The Foundation funds work benefitting South Asian communities in North America related to domestic violence intervention; immigration rights; prevention of, and support for victims, of hate crimes, discrimination and racial profiling; and other community access to justice issues. 

  • Educational Programming 

Through its “Learning Lab”, the Foundation offers a series of trainings led by seasoned attorneys and other experts on various topics such as corporate governance, and immigration law seminars to bystander intervention, and using mindfulness as a tool to meet professional challenges. These trainings are open to the public. 

  • Collaboration

Using our ability to reach non-profits supporting South Asian communities from across North America, the Foundation curates “Roundtables” for non-profits. These are opportunities for non-profits to come together and discuss issues and topics of particular importance to their work and learn from the successes of and challenges faced by peer organizations. 

The Foundation regularly participates in pro bono projects and often partners with its sister organization, the South Asian Bar Association of North America, to provide pro bono legal services, including in 2019, where volunteers from five cities provided legal counsel to asylum seekers in detention facilities in Dilley, Texas, and in 2022, partnering with the Pars Equality Center in Fremont, California, helped register new Afghan refugee arrivals for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). 

  • Other Causes Important to Our Communities

The Foundation has led fundraisers to collect relief funds and other resources during humanitarian disasters including for the 2021 COVID-19 crisis in India and in 2022, for Pakistani families and children in the aftermath of severe and record-breaking flooding in Pakistan. 

**NEW**

The Foundation is pleased to announce it launched the South Asian Legal Impact Initiative, a multi-year project, to help fill the unmet needs of the South Asian communities today and build further community assets. The first step of the Initiative is to fund a South Asian Legal Impact Fellowship from the Fall of 2023 to 2025 at the Asian American Legal Defense Education Fund (AALDEF) in NY. See [insert weblink} for more information.