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Grant Recipients List for the 3rd Cycle, 2002Alliance for Affordable Housing $4,000PO Box 1243 Santa Fe, NM 87504 Alliance for Affordable Housing is a grassroots community organization composed primarily of working-class citizens and those directly impacted by the continuing affordable housing crisis in Santa Fe, NM. They organize to combat injustices relating to the amount and location of affordable housing, while recognizing these problems are a symptom of the larger issues of an endangered quality of life. Funds will be used for general support in building community leadership and civic pride within under-represented sectors of the city. Boundary Waters Wilderness Foundation $4,000 401 North Third Street Minneapolis, MN 55401 This organization's mission is to protect, preserve and restore the wilderness character of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the Quetico-Superior Ecosystem. Funds will be used to engage their members to conduct wilderness inventories, then develop a wilderness protection proposal that will ensure future safeguarding of these lands. Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice $7,500 PO Box 33124 Riverside, CA 92519 Born out of the community of Glen Avon's battle to stop exposure to dangerous chemicals from a toxic waste site - the Stingfellow Acid Pits, CCAEJ is an environmental health resource center that provides training, technical and organizational support and advocacy work for communities of the Riverside and San Bernardino County on environmental health and justice issues. Funds will be used to support their Healthy Communities Campaign which includes development of a Community Advocates Training Course, a Technical Assistance Team, and a Riverside County Environmental Justice Coalition. Center for Economic Justice $8,000 202 Harvard Drive SE Albuquerque, NM 87106 CEJ's objective is to strengthen international grassroots movements to counter corporate-driven globalization and to promote just alternatives. Within the U.S., they link these struggles with community groups, activists, and polilcy advocates, with the goal of inspiring and strengthening cooperation. Funds will be used to support the World Bank Bonds Boycott, a broad-based education and organizing efforts that builds the political power of community-based groups working for social and economic justice while pressuring the World Bank to make fundamental reforms. Centro Independiente de Trabajadores Agricolas (CITA) $7,500 PO Box 109 Albion, NY 14411 CITA's mission is to help farmworkers in New York State organize collective workplace agreements which will improve their living and working conditions, improve the safety of foods for consumers and safeguard the environment for New York's rural communities. Funds will be used to help New York's farmworkers who are excluded from basic labor laws, to speak out and be heard. CITA will pursue workplace organizing for collective bargaining agreements that will improve justice and quality of life for New York's agricultural workers, and thereby help reduce discrimination and workplace exploitation. Citizen's Awareness Network $8,000 Box 83 Shelburne Falls, MA 1370 CAN is concerned with environmental pollution and health issues surrounding exposure to toxins. Their philosophy is rooted in their experience living in a poor, rural community housing two nuclear reactors and dioxin generating industires in which issues of environmental justice are real and immediate. CAN opposes not only the pollution of their land, but the shipping of radioactive waste from their community to contaminate other communities. Funds will be used for their "Paul Revere Rides" to stop the sale, relicensing, and building of new nukes in New England and the Northeast by controversial corporations and the siting of nuclear waste dumps in the West to make the region nuclear free. Citizens For Safe Water Around Badger (CSWAB) $5,000 E12629 Weigand's Bay South Merrimac, WI 53561 CSWAB seeks to directly address social and environmental justice issues by raising public awareness, engaging community members in campaigns to change public policy, defining the community's right to know, and ultimately reducing risks to human health and natural systems. Funds will be used for general support. Citizens of Louisville Organized and United Together (CLOUT) $5,000 1113 S. Fourth Street Louisville, KY 40203 CLOUT is an organization made up of congregations and other community groups situated in low and moderate income communities in Louisville, KY. Funding will be used for the Public Housing Justice and Empowerment Project working with a newly established organization, Concerned Citizens of Clarksdale United. CCCU will be addressing various concerns of the community, including the ongoing work regarding the proposal by the Housing Authority of Louisville to demolish and redevelop the community. Cook Inlet Keeper $5,000 PO Box 3269 Homer, AK 99603 The Cook Inlet Keeper will use funds to mobilize and train hundreds of citizens through its state and federally approved Citizens Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP). Through CEMP, Keeper trains citizen volunteers to collect baseline data from stream and estuarine sites and makes this information available to the general public and to professionals charged with managing and protecting public resources. By immersing citizens in their public resources and providing them with the tools and training to monitor and protect these resources, Cook Inlet Keeper is addressing the root causes of watershed degradation and building a corps of watershed stewards to ensure clean water and healthy habitat. Denali Citizens Council $10,000 PO Box 78 Denali Park, AK 99755 Denali Citizens Council's mission is to protect the natural integrity of Denali National Park through education, communication and advocacy, and to encourage sustainable growth on adjacent lands through education and involvement of local citizens. Funds will be used for general support. Diversity Works $8,000 800 Heinz Ave. #14 Berkeley, CA 94710 This organization will use funds to support their DiverseCity Program. Diveristy Works will hire 10 to 12 high school aged youth as DiverseCity interns who work approximately 10 hours a week. Their work is entirely community-based, working with hundreds of East Bay youth during the course of the academic year. Through youth-led interactive workshops, the interns engage groups of young people in dialogue about pressing issues in their lives like their identities, values, stereotypes, interactions with others, and ideas for positive action. Ecology Center, Inc. dba High Plains Films $5,000 PO Box 8796 Missoula, MT 59807-8796 The organizations staff monitors natural resource agency activities and educates the public about critical public land and biological diversity issues. Their main focus is on field monitoring, spatially-organized computer database analyses and production/distribution of environmental documentaries. Funds will be used to distribute the documentary film "Wind River" to activist groups, public libraries, tribal college libraries and Native American tribal agencies. The distribution of the video will further the goals of the recognition of Native American treaty rights and promote sound environmental resource protection. Institute For Social Ecology $10,000 1118 Maple Hill Road Plainfield, VT 5667 The Biotechnology Project is an independent project of the Institute for Social Ecology and is an internationally recognized grassroots initiative for biotechnology activism, committed to expanding public debate around genetic engineering and other biotechnologies through popular education, corporate campaigns, and the development of community based activists networks. Funds will be used to support their central role in the development of local, regional and national networks of biotechnology activists and critics. Jane Addams Senior Caucus $5,000 4040 N. Sheridan Chicago, IL 60613 The Jane Addams Senior Caucus is a grassroots organization of Chicago-area older adults organizing to build relationships, develop leaders, educate people and create the power necessary for older adults to play a central role in determining their quality of life. Funds will be used to help JASC build momentum gathered from recent affordable housing victories on the neighborhood level to organize seniors and other taxpayers to demand that the City direct its resources towards truly affordable housing. Kansas Rural Center $7,500 PO Box 133 Whiting, KS 66552 Kansas Rural Center promotes the long term health of the land and its people through education, research and advocacy. The Center cultivates grassroots support for public policies that encourage family farming and stewardship of soil and water. Funds will be used for the project called "Farmer Mentoring - Growing the Next Generation." Mentoring relationships between experienced farmers and beginning farmers will introduce new farmers to improved conservation-based practices and alternative marketing strategies. Keeping Track, Inc. $8,000 PO Box 444 Huntington, VT 5462 Keeping Track's mission is to inspire community participation in the long-term stewardship of wildlife habitat. They teach adults and children to observe, interpret, record, and monitor evidence of wildlife in their communities, and they support the use of monitoring data by citizens in local and regional conservation planning. Keeping Track's Technical Support Program for community-based habitat monitoring programs will expand, in part by increasing the Technical Support Coordinator to full-time status through this grant. Miami Workers' Center $7,500 6127 NW 7th Avenue Miami, FL 33127 The Miami Workers' Center builds grassroots, worker-led organizations that take leadership in fighting poverty and initiating community organizing campaigns around issues most pertinent to no- and low-wage workers in their communities. Funds will be used for general support. Missouri Coalition for the Environment Foundation $10,000 6267 Delmar 2 East St. Louis, MO 63130 Funds granted to this organization will be used to support the "Activist Incubator," a project to provide training and support to grassroots citizens' groups in Missouri as they organize to confront environmental hazards (lead smelters, medical waste incinerators, cement kilns, etc.) in their communities. Montana People's Action $7,500 208 E. Main Street Missoula, MT 59802 Montana People's Action is a socially and racially diverse organization of low to moderate income Montanans. They empower members to achieve lasting change for social and ecomonic justice using direct action. Their project, Indian People's Action, organizes the voice of Montana's urban Indian population. Members fight for systemic change that results in positive change to improve the lives of the state's urban Indians. National Forest Protection Alliance $8,000 1025 Vermont Avenue NW Washington, DC 20005 NFPA calls for an immediate end to the industrial exploitation of all federal public lands, and in particular, an end to commercial logging in national forests. Funds will be used to continue building support nationwide for this effort through the following key components of their campaign: grassroots organizing, "Operation Enduring Forests" campaign, "10 Most Endangered National Forests" project, restoration/wildfire work and market-based campaigning. Native Seeds / SEARCH $8,000 526 N. Fourth Avenue Tucson, AZ 85705 Native Seeds/SEARCH saves and distributes at-risk traditional Native American varieties of crop seeds while helping to reinvigorate the role these seeds play in the cultures of the American Southwest and Northwest Mexico. Funds will be used to support their Tarahumara Crop Growout which will return heirloom seeds to the Tarahumara farmers, empowering them to maintain their agriculture and cultural traditions into the future. New York City AIDS Housing Network $7,500 80 A Fourth Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11217 The NYC AIDS Housing Network is a membership organization led by low-income people living with HIV/AIDS. Funds will be used for general support in their efforts to provide education, support and skills to low-income people living with HIV/AIDS so that they can effectively advocate for more housing. The AIDS Housing Network accomplishes this goal through their work in public education, community organizing and creating a community of support. Nia Project $7,500 35 Boylston Street Jamaica Plain, MA 2130 The Nia Project aims to develop youth leaders through community activism and involvement. Funds will be used to develop a Roxbury Chapter to support their efforts to effectively address the root causes of gentrification in the South End and Lower Roxbury. They are in the process of building a youth-led campaign to form a strong tenant association at the Lenox Street Housing Project. They also hope to acquire an abandoned former teen center at the housing development and develop it into a Community Resource and Organizing Center. Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont $10,000 PO Box 697 Richmond, VT 5477 NOFA of Vermont is an organization of farmers, gardeners and consumers working to develop an economically viable, and ecologically sound Vermont food system. Funds will be used for their Farm to School Mentor program. This program builds partnerships between schools, farmers and their communities through agricultural education aligned to the Vermont Educational Standards. Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) $7,500 PO Box 6753 Huntington, WV 25773-6753 OVEC is dedicated to the improvement and preservation of the environment through education, grassroots organizing, and leadership development. The general support grant will fund organizing citizens groups to publicly oppose mountaintop removal/valley fill coal mining and to work to stimulate enforcement of mining laws that are not currently being enforced. People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) $7,500 32 Seventh Street San Francisco, CA 94103 People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) is a multi-racial, multi-lingual organization, made up of and run by low-wage workers and public assistance recipients in San Francisco. Through their campaign and organizing work POWER creates sustainable employment for San Francisco's low-income communities, improves working conditions at existing jobs, and increases access to support services that assist low-income families in the transition from welfare to work. Funds granted will be used to support the development of their Leadership Institute. Philadelphia Student Union $7,500 1315 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19107 The Philadelphia Student Union is dedicated to empowering youth to work toward a more just society, through educational reform, while preparing them for community leadership. Funds will enable them to continue to provide programs to empower young people to become activists and leaders in their own schools. Rural Southern Voice for Peace $8,000 278 White Oak Creek Road Burnsville, NC 28714 Rural Southern Voice for Peace provides training, consultation and organizing support for Listening Projects, Facilitated Dialogue and other tools that empower grassroots organizations to work creatively, compassionately and effectively for justice, peace and the environment. Funds will be used to develop RSVP as a national Listening Project Clearinghouse and Training Resource Center that can support and strengthen grassroots, community based organizing efforts throughout the U.S.. Students Transforming and Resisting Corporations $7,500 831 North Watts Portland, OR 97217 STARC is organizing at the grassroots level to fight for social, racial, and economic justice by holding corporations and political officials publicly accountable for their actions. They work to ensure that the needs of people and the environment come before corporate profits. Their Socially Responsible Investment initiative calls for structual changes in university investment policies in order to hold companies accountable for all their negative social and environmental externalities. STARC will use the grant to hire a field organizer to continue their work to improve university investment policies. Utah Environmental Congress $7,500 1817 S. Main Street Salt Lake City, UT 84115 The Utah Environmental Congress (UEC) received general support funding for its Forest Monitoring Program. Diligent monitoring of Forest Service projects has brought National Forest issues to the forefront in Utah. The UEC works to stop environmentally destructive projects through comments, administrative appeals, and litigation. The UEC made recent history in Utah by winning the first lawsuit ever filed against a Forest Service timber sale. Utah Progressive Network $5,000 PO Box 521391 Salt Lake City, UT 84152-1391 Utah Progressive Network's mission is to build collective power for progressive social change by challenging oppression in all its forms; protect democracy and ensure equal access to political process; promote opportunites for people to exercise their rights and assume their responsibilities as members of society; confront threats to civil rights and liberties; challenge government to become fair, open, and accountable; and promote a sustainable future for all Utahns. Funds will be used to build UPNet's political education curriculum, sponsor cross-trainings for new leaders in emerging organizations, and increase individual membership involvement. Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, Inc. $7,500 61 Elm Street Montpelier, VT 05602-2818 The Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund helps Vermonters and Vermont communities create and retain quality jobs that sustain Vermont's natural resources. Funds will be used to support a partnership of agricultural groups working together to support growth of the local agriculture sector by expanding local demand for Vermont grown foods. The partnership is part of VSJF's Cornerstone project designed to expand in-state markets for goods grown and manufactured in Vermont. White Earth Land Recovery Project $7,500 32033 E. Round Lake Road Ponsford, MN 56575-9250 This organization's mission is to facilitate recovery of the original land base of the White Earth Indian Reservation, while preserving and restoring traditional practices of sound land stewardship, language fluency, community development and strengthening their spiritual and cultural heritage. Wild Rice is sacred to the White Earth Tribe and an integral part of their livelihood and cultural heritage. Yet the University of Minnesota has mapped the Wild Rice genome, and two patents have been issues on wild rice to a paddy rice seed producer. Funds were provided to help launch a coalition to oppose the biopiracy and genetic theft and manipulation of this vital grain. Wild Angels $10,000 PO Box 4729 Sante Fe, NM 87502 Wild Angels designs and leads conservation campaigns that integrate research, public education, grassroots organizing and coalition building, professional flight capabilities, and collaboration with leaders in government, business and media. Funds will be used to assist the Hopi and Navajo to end extraction of pristine, potable water by Peabody Coal (over 3 million gallons per day) from the Navajo Aquifer at Black Mesa, Arizona for coal slurry to Mojave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada. And to help the Hopi and Navajo nations develop more sustainable opportunities for revenue that also preserve their religious and agriculture traditions. Wild Farm Alliance $7,500 406 Main St Watsonville, CA 95076 Wild Farm Alliance promotes agriculture that helps protect and restore wild nature. Funds will be used to continue developing a foundation of support among farmers, conservationists, organizations, agencies, and the public, while working towards their goals of developing wild farm educational materials, networking, conducting research, supporting on-the-ground projects, and solidifying their organization. World Wall for Peace $7,500 1427 Milvia Street Berkeley, CA 94709 This organization's mission is to diminish violence and to foster world peace by creating "peace walls" made of tiles that have been hand painted primarily by students. Funds from the Foundation will be used for development of their website and newsletter, and to document and reorganize all of their artwork. Grassroots Volunteers $500 911 Southery Rd. Towson, MD 21204 Grassroots Volunteers is a startup organization working to create a website for people interested in volunteering for grassroots community initiatives. It will feature projects that are ecologically sustainable and socially just and provide resources and opportunity for would be volunteers. Parents For Safe Schools $900 8525 High Timber Ct. Ellicott City, MD 21043 PFSS is a grassroots advocacy group of parents and community members dedicated to environmental justice. Funding was provided to help pay a consultant to provide a data analysis report on the environmental testing at an elementary school located next to a landfill. |