2007 Funding Summary
The Harris and Frances Block Foundation is proud to highlight the projects we funded in 2007.
Friends of Burlington Gardens
Continued support for increased participation of underserved Burlington area residents in community, school, neighborhood, youth, senior and garden group projects
Connecticut League of Conservation Voters Education Fund:
This statewide group will expand two key educational programs; The Environmental Briefing Book requires up-dating to include the environmental impact of global warming and energy and the Environment 101 program will expand the information sessions from four to six in 2007.
http://www.conservationeducation.org
Junior Appalachian Musicians Program (JAM):
JAM, school based (grades 3-8) Appalachian education program, empowers students through the music of their community. Children develop skills by learning to play traditional instruments by themselves and with others and develop an identification with and appreciation of their cultural heritage.
http://www.juniorappalachianmusicians.org
Pesticide Education Project
The school-based Toxic-Free Kids program organizes parents, teachers and students to reduce children’s toxic exposures by replacing toxic pesticides with low-cost, common-sense and non-toxic pest control programs in North Carolina schools. This year will taking a new direction to reach the youngest children.
http://www.ibiblio.org/arc
Virginia Forest Watch
Forest Watch’s goals are to strengthen protection of Virginia’s inventoried roadless areas, old-growth forests, important watersheds, and other key areas/resources; to build a stronger public-lands-conservation community to protect public forest assets; and to increase public awareness and citizen action on national forest issues in Virginia.
http://www.virginiaforestwatch.org
Global Justice Ecology
Support for the ‘Stop GE Trees Campaign’. The goal of the campaign is to prohibit the ecologically and socially devastating release of genetically engineered trees into the environment. The GJEP brings together organizations ranging from large national groups like the Sierra Club to regional networks like The Dogwood Alliance, to local grassroots groups in regions at risk from plans for future GE tree plantations. The work includes coalition-building, local grassroots organizing, public outreach and education, media campaigns, protests, strategy meetings and economic pressure through market campaigns.
http://www.globaljusticeecology.org
Dogwood Alliance: Packaging Campaign
The Dogwood Alliance is now embarking on a Packaging Campaign. They are launching a public campaign which will engage citizens and grassroots activists in challenging targeted companies to adopt company wide environmental paper policies. Those that emphasize 100% post-consumer recycled paperboard
http://www.dogwoodalliance.org
Nurturing Our Roots: Nuestras-Raices
Nurturing Our Roots is a community agricultural partnership between a university extension and a community organization in which an urban farm serves as a classroom to study animal husbandry, horticulture, and ecology within a Puerto Rican cultural context.
http://www.nuestras-raices.org
Food Works at Two Rivers Center
Food Works Farm-to-Table, Foodbank Farm and Good Food Good Medicine programs are working toward a regional food security network, one that connects low-income Vermonters to the producers of their food and helps to establish a more sustainable, locally based and just form of food production and consumption.
http://www.tworiverscenter.org
Institute for Social Ecology Biotechnology Project
The Biotechnology Project offers grassroots leadership, research and education for the movement to challenge the use of genetic engineering in agriculture and forestry.
http://www.social-ecology.org
Minuteman Media
Minuteman Media was created to inform people who have little access to progressive opinion about alternative perspectives and targets small circulation newspapers to receive weekly dispatch of progressive viewpoints for publications in their editorial pages.
http://www.minutemanmedia.org/
Peace and Justice Center
The Peace and Justice Center seeks to educate and mobilize Vermonters around the effects of US militarism here at home and abroad; economic and racial injustice; and issues of peace and human rights.
http://www.pjcvt.org
Toxics Action Center
Zero Waste Campaign seeks to address solid waste problem in Vermont. In order to address the ever-increasing municipal solid waste problem and the decreasing amount of land fill space, the Toxics Action Center and the Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District have developed the Zero Waste Campaign.
http://www.toxicsaction.org
Vermont Independent Media Project
The Vermont Independent Media Project aims to transform readers of the local media in Windham County, VT from consumers of a product into active participants and stakeholders. Vermont Media holds free workshops in writing, editing and journalism skills while putting out a local community paper; “The Commons”
http://commonsnews.org/
New England Grassroots Environmental Fund
The mission of NEGEF is to energize and nurture long-term civic engagement in local initiatives that create and maintain healthy, just, safe and environmentally sustainable communities. This grant supports the Small grants pool that provides small grants ranging from $500-$2,500 throughout the New England states.
http://www.grassrootsfund.org/
Connecticut Audubon Society
The 2007 lecture series aims to increase people’s awareness, appreciation, and scope of WATER. The goal of this series in to increase people’s awareness of water as a resource to be conserved and protected.
Twinfield Union School—Mississippi-Vermont Community Connection
This initiative is a commitment to create a new model of civic education that will nurture a new generation of citizen activists across rural America. The project came out of a program called the Rural Schools Initiative and has been a part of a new Rights in Action class at Twinfield
The Vermont Conservation Education Fund and Rural Vermont
These two groups are collaborating on a project to help citizens become more skillful in the techniques of communicating effectively with their elected representatives and fellow citizens. These two groups believe that the best way to bring members of the agricultural and environmental communities together related to their common interests is through democracy training.
http://www.vcef.org/aboutvcef
http://www.ruralvermont.org
North Carolina Horse Council 'Trail Crew Leader School'
The overall strategic goal of NCHC is to manage and maintain a statewide program to promote trail riding and trail access. NCHC seeks to develop a skilled and reliable core of volunteers who can work on existing trails, and who can employ proven sustainable methods for locating new trails and re-routes.
http://www.nchorsecouncil.com/horse-happenings/trail-master-certification-cou