First Grace Community Alliance's mission is to work with and for people in need, especially women and children, by meeting food, housing, and other emergency needs, while simultaneously challenging systemic poverty in the greater New Orleans Area. Our two main programs are Hagar's House and Project Ishmael.

Project Ishmael is a pro bono immigration legal program for children that seeks to:

• Meet some of the immigration legal needs of children in New Orleans through direct representation and education,
  
• Coordinate with volunteer attorneys to help meet the diverse legal needs of women and children who currently live at Hagar's House, and
  
• Challenge systemic injustices that allow children and their families to be separated, harassed, deported or incarcerated based on skin color or immigration status.

Hagar’s House is a sanctuary for women and children in New Orleans that provides an open and empowering residential community, resource coordination and a safe space to transition into sustainable housing.We offer:

• A beautiful, clean, safe place to rest and call home
  
• An open and empowering space that welcomes women, children and those who identify as transgender
  
• An intentional community that is actively engaged in undoing the root causes of poverty
  
• Holistic programming focused on physical health, emotional/spiritual health and social justice
  
• A Capacity Building partnership where residents meet weekly with staff to set their own long and short-term goals and to determine their own path for meeting those goals
  
• A savings program in which working residents save 70% of their income, ideally $3,000 at the time of moving out
  Healthy food and space to plant in a community garden