CVCF’s Fresno DRIVE initiative works to increase economic inclusion by expanding opportunity for immigrant communities and others facing barriers to economic mobility. On August 21st, Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative (CVIIC) hosted their Regional Conference and featured a session about the Southeast Asian immigration experience moderated by Fresno DRIVE Senior Program Officer julie vue. A recent study by USC Equity Research Institute showed that ICE arrests

By: Caroline D. Champlin, UC ANR F3 Local (Local Farms & Food Innovation) is one of three programs in CVCF’s F3 Initiative working to build a more inclusive and resilient food economy in the Central Valley. Everything starts with a tractor. That’s the mantra of grape grower Albert Smith, whose family has been farming in southwest Fresno for generations. “Everything you do starts with a good machine,” Smith said. Purchasing new equipment, however, can be an exorbitant expense,

CVCF’s Sierra San Joaquin Jobs (S2J2) Initiative is celebrating a $10.4 million award from Governor Gavin Newsom for the Sierra San Joaquin Jobs region. Our partners at the San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance (SJVMA) secured the grant to accelerate the growth of our local manufacturing sector. In 2023, S2J2 led a broad community outreach effort that included local and regional tables, an economic analysis and 4,000 community surveys. The results showed that advanced a

If you reside in the Central Valley, chances are you have been impacted by inequitable health care access – whether you experienced a long wait time to secure an appointment with a specialist, had to travel outside of a rural city for a hospitalization, or had difficulties securing insurance coverage. CVCF’s Health Care Landscape Study, published earlier this year, sets out to underscore these local disparities and prompt discussion and brainstorming on how to make health ca

CVCF’s Measurement & Evaluation (M&E) team launched its first internship cohort this past summer. From July to August 2026, three undergraduate college students had the opportunity to learn from M&E’s Senior Researcher Chelsea Chapman, Ph.D., about how data can be used to influence public policy. The M&E internship program was launched to explore current use cases for the Fresno Mobility Metrics data dashboard, which highlights data on 28 metrics and over 172 visualizations