Four Years, One Orchard: Reflections on the 2026 Community Impact Award

A reflection from Sara Ruiz, Ashrei Executive Director

On Friday August 28, Ashrei was honored to accept the Community Impact Award at the Hispanic Leaders Group of Greater St. Louis's Esperanza Awards. We were nominated alongside two other finalists doing valuable work in our community, the St. Louis Colombian Society and STL Santos.

This recognition belongs to everyone that is part of Ashrei: the volunteers who have answered hotline calls for more than 570 days, our organizational partners who've stood with us in protest on sidewalks and in strategic conversations in church basements, and the families who trusted us with their worst days and let us help carry them.

Ashrei began operations in 2022.

Four years later, much of our work supports immigrant families navigating a system built to exclude them — the Rapid Response Hotline, which has fielded thousands of calls and directly supported over 1,000 families facing enforcement; the Immigrant Family Emergency Response Fund, which has put nearly $1 million in direct cash assistance into the hands of families in crisis; the Eastern Missouri Immigration Enforcement Dashboard, a public resource we produce to shed light on realities blurred by our government and inform strategies to end suffering; our refugee resettlement work; and our North City Photo ID Project, helping people get the identification that so many systems assume everyone already has.

None of that existed five years ago.

That it exists now, at this scale, in this short a time, is only possible because of the relationships we've built, inside Ashrei and across this region.

This particular award is especially significant because he Hispanic Leaders Group has been doing this work since the 80s, and being recognized by an organization with that history, for work defending some of Missouri's most vulnerable families, means something.

It's a reminder that no orchard is tended by one gardener, and that trust between organizations, like trust with the families we serve, gets built relationship by relationship, not overnight, and with great care and intentionality.

The work to stand with the most vulnerable in our communities - especially immigrants without lawful status - has not always been welcomed, let alone recognized, in spaces like this. In the last few years, we’ve seen many organizations and leaders choose to grow, to show up differently, to widen who they stand alongside.

This is something so central to Ashrei’s work: we must build deep relationships so that we can work together to enrich the soil before we expect anything to grow. 

My hope for Ashrei and our whole community is that we might practice enough care for each other and clarity around our vision that we can withstand the storms that will keep coming; that we can build enough collective power to change the systems that exclude so many of our loved ones; that we can create a Missouri where a family doesn't need a hotline to survive an encounter with their own local police.

My hope is that more of our community keeps showing up, long after this event, this year or this election cycle. We have to hold a bigger vision for our region, rooted in dignity, justice and love. And realizing that vision requires every single one of us. May we all continue this important work in deeper partnership so this collective vision can become our shared reality.

Thank you to the Hispanic Leaders Group for this recognition, and thank you to our staff, Board, volunteers, donors, community partners, and individuals that contribute, trust, and cultivate a future marked by dignity and justice together with Ashrei.