Get to know us by getting to know some of the organization we support.
FOOD
PLANET
HEALTH
OUTDOOR
COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY
Calypso Farm and Ecology Center
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Calypso Farm and Ecology Center promotes local agriculture and environmental awareness by providing hands-on education about natural and farming ecosystems to school children and community members. The farm also operates as a CSA to feed local families.
Native Seeds
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Native Seeds promotes sustainable agriculture and food security by conserving heirloom seeds. The regional seed bank includes 1800 varieties of arid-land adapted agricultural crops, which have been chosen by generations of farmers and gardeners for their genetic adaptations to particular growing conditions. To promote agricultural biodiversity and food security, Native Seeds offers 350 varieties—many of them rare or endangered—to traditional communities and to gardeners worldwide.
Alameda County Community Food Bank
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Alameda County Community Food Bank provides nutritious food to people in need, and promotes public policies that address hunger and its root causes. Through 275 food pantries, soup kitchens, child-care centers, senior centers, after-school programs, and other community-based organizations, the Food Bank distributes enough food for 300,000 meals weekly.
Bay Area Wilderness Training
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Bay Area Wilderness Training, a project of the Earth Island Institute, instructs and equips teachers and community leaders wishing to lead wilderness field trips for urban youth, offering students an expanded sense of self and the world around them.
Community Alliance with Family Farmers
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Community Alliance with Family Farmers advocates for California family farmers and sustainable agriculture. Programs include Buy Fresh, Buy Local, which opens new markets for family farmers and educates consumers about the benefits of buying local, and Farm to School, which reconnects children with local food and agriculture in their classrooms and cafeterias.
Community Resource for Science
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Community Resource for Science supports educators working to excite children about science, and promotes critical thinking skills through hands-on experiences that deal with real world problems.
Connolly Ranch Education Center
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Connolly Ranch Education Center connects kids with nature through farm-based environmental education programs focusing on farm life, organic gardening, the sources and benefits of healthy foods, and an appreciation of how nature sustains us.
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund advances the rights of people with disabilities. They run a disability rights legal clinic in collaboration with San Francisco Bay Area law schools, and train and educate people with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities so that they can challenge discrimination and participate fully in the lives of their communities.
Each One Reach One
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Each One Reach One offers one-on-one mentoring in the creative acts of theatre arts, playwriting, and academic studies to incarcerated youth, supporting their efforts to become positively engaged with society.
Ecology Center
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Ecology Center facilitates urban lifestyles that advance ecological sustainability, social equity, and economic development. They provide the information and infrastructure that make sustainable practices possible on a large scale. Projects include the Berkeley's Farmers' Markets and residential curbside recycling program, Farm Fresh Choice food justice program, and EcoHouse demonstrations and classes.
Food Forward
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Food Forward addresses urban hunger. Volunteers harvest locally grown food from private homes and public spaces and deliver it to local food pantries and organizations serving those in need.
Giant Steps Equestrian Center
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Giant Steps Equestrian Center offers life-changing experiences to people with a wide range of disabilities through their horse "therapists" (including Snuffles, Scarlet, and Katydid).
Kala Art Institute
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Kala Art Institute brings quality art education to the general public and public school children through on-site classes, an Artists-in-Schools program, exhibitions, lectures, and special events.
Local Ecology and Agriculture Fremont (LEAF)
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Local Ecology and Agriculture Fremont (LEAF) provides local residents with information about sustainable and ecological practices including local food production, organic gardening, waste reduction, green building, and resource conservation. LEAF also collaborates with other community organizations to start neighborhood gardens and to build community among Fremont’s diverse residents.
Loco Bloco
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Loco Bloco provides low-income, minority, and immigrant youth and families access to professional-level arts education – percussion, dance, visual arts, and theater arts – at no cost. They advocate for art as a tool to overcome injustice, promote ethnic and cultural diversity, and contribute positively to community.
Luna Dance Institute
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Luna Dance Institute promotes dance as a creative practice to heal individuals, families, and communities. Luna brings dance and choreography to children through three programs – Studio Lab, MPACT, and School and Community Alliances – that provide students with knowledge to explore dance through active participation, guided discovery, and critical reflection.
Project Bike Trip
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Project Bike Trip provides comprehensive bicycle education and training for youth and adults, introducing the bicycle as alternative transportation, a potent solution for childhood obesity, and an effective way to benefit the economy and environment.
Rooted in Community
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Rooted in Community, a project of Earth Island Institute, prepares young people for leadership positions in neighborhood food security through urban and rural agriculture, community gardening, and related environmental justice work.
Sacred Rok
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Sacred Rok helps under-served young people learn to respect nature by exploring and understanding the beauty of Yosemite National Park and through these experiences, to better respect themselves.
San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR)
GRANTEE PROFILE:
San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR) promotes good planning and government through research, analysis, public education, and advocacy. SPUR gives citizens a voice in crafting solutions to common problems.
Taylor Family Foundation
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Taylor Family Foundation offers children with life threatening and chronic illnesses, and developmental disabilities a therapeutic camp experience designed to enhance their quality of life.
National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA)
GRANTEE PROFILE:
National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) promotes the development of interscholastic mountain biking leagues for U.S. high school students, along with athletic skills, teamwork, and respect for community and the environment.
Center for Early Intervention on Deafness
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Center for Early Intervention on Deafness improves the lives of babies and young children who are deaf, hard of hearing, or who have severe speech and language delays.
Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program provides and promotes accessible sports and recreation opportunities for people with physical disabilities. Through their Adaptive Cycling Program, they loan 65 specially adapted bicycles to disabled riders, who are welcome to cycle solo or as part of a BORP-organized group ride.
Berkeley Youth Alternatives
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Berkeley Youth Alternatives champions prevention and intervention to help young people and their families address problems before they become crises. Through programs including the Inter-generational Garden Project, Lady Hoops Twilite Basketball League, Video Production, and DJ Training, Berkeley Youth Alternatives supports individuals’ efforts to reach their full potential.
Farmer-Veteran Coalition
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Farmer-Veteran Coalition helps returning veterans find training and employment on America’s farms. FVC believes that America’s aging farmers, local and regional agriculture, and the sustainable farming movement would all be well served by people accustomed to discipline, dedication, and hard work. In turn, veterans also can benefit – even in these economic times – by helping to grow the green economy.
Cool the Earth
GRANTEE PROFILE:
A parent- and volunteer-run program that educates K-8 students about climate change. Cool the Earth advocates for “education through action” and empowers kids to take simple, measurable actions to reduce their carbon emissions. Because kids’ enthusiasm is contagious, Cool the Earth (launched in 2007) is now running in over 50 U.S. schools.
Growers First
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Growers First helps rural farmers in Mexico, Honduras, Indonesia, and Rwanda cultivate sustainable, higher incomes and new jobs in their communities. Through ecologically balanced farming methods, increased crop yields, and organic certification of their coffee (available in Traceable-Transformation™ blends), over 600 families in 24 villages are improving their quality of life.
Waterside Workshops
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Waterside Workshops empowers youth through vocational skills instruction, outdoor activities, and organizational and retail experience. Facilities include a wood workshop and a bicycle repair shop, as well as access to nearby Aquatic Park. Waterside Workshops also serves the Berkeley community with a bicycle sales and repair facility, a full-service wooden boat building shop, and the city’s only waterfront coffeehouse.
Diabetic Youth Foundation
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Diabetic Youth Foundation works to improve the quality of life for children, teens, and families affected by diabetes. Since 1937, DYF has provided educational and recreational programs – such as Bearskin Meadow summer camp in Sequoia National Forest – that encourage personal growth and independence, and create opportunities that might otherwise seem unattainable for individuals and families living with diabetes.
GrowingGreat
GRANTEE PROFILE:
GrowingGreat addresses the problems of obesity and rising health care costs by helping children and communities reconnect with healthy food. Through elementary school gardens, a Farm-to-School Harvest-of-the-Month tasting program, and nutrition education, GrowingGreat has reached over 30,000 students and families in California and Hawaii.
The Friendship Club
GRANTEE PROFILE:
The Friendship Club educates and empowers at-risk girls in grades six through twelve each year. The Club teaches life skills through after-school clubs, summer programs, mentoring, community service projects, and special programs such as the Healthy Choices Project, which offers health education to disadvantaged rural girls through cooking courses, nutrition information, fitness classes, and training for a fun run.
City Slicker Farms
GRANTEE PROFILE:
City Slicker Farms grows sustainable, high-yield, backyard gardens and urban farms that provide West Oakland residents with affordable organic fruits and vegetables, and the tools they need to grow their own food. The gardens empower children and adults who want to learn about the connections between ecology, farming, and the urban environment.
GRID Alternatives
GRANTEE PROFILE:
GRID Alternatives installs solar panels for homeowners in low-income communities that are most affected by changing energy prices and least likely to have funds for alternative energy. They also train volunteers and job seekers to install solar electric systems.
Movement Strategy Center
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Movement Strategy Center increases the capacity of individuals, organizations, alliances, and sectors to support social and racial justice. Successful movements require that a range of different strategies develop simultaneously, so MSC helps local campaigns operate increasingly collaboratively, strategically, and sustainably, to form powerful alliances that can affect state-level policy.
Canopy
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Canopy works on growing the urban forests in Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, and neighboring communities. Through their Healthy Trees, Healthy Kids program, they’re currently planting 1,000 trees in and around schools.
Glide San Francisco
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Glide San Francisco offers programs to create a “radically inclusive” community, alleviate suffering, and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization. Programs include Feed the Hungry, Inspire Youth and Children, House the Community, and Green the Tenderloin.
Family Services of Tulare County
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Family Services of Tulare County helps children, adults, and families to heal from violence and choose healthy relationships. Services include counseling, education, advocacy, and training; programs designed for high school students include the My Strength club for boys and My Voice club for girls, which address dating, and violence prevention.
Alameda Meals on Wheels
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Alameda Meals on Wheels delivers hot, nourishing meals to Alameda residents since 1973. Seven-day-a-week, volunteers carry mid-day meals to more than 140 local residents of all ages, who are welcome to pay on a sliding fee scale.
Alameda Point Collaborative
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Alameda Point Collaborative provides 200 units of housing to families and individuals who have been homeless. Each year it serves approximately 500 people, including nearly 300 children and youth. The Collaborative also offers employment opportunities, on-the-job training, two playgrounds, an urban farm and community garden, a retail plant nursery (specializing in native and edible plants), and a commercial kitchen.
Alliance for Climate Education
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Alliance for Climate Education supports a generational shift to fight climate change. The Alliance introduces high school students to the basics of climate science through an award-winning multimedia assembly, and encourages them to Do One Thing (DOT) to help the environment and cool the climate. Youth representatives go on to influence their peers, leaders, and politicians.
American River Conservancy
GRANTEE PROFILE:
American River Conservancy provides environmental education and outdoor recreation for children and adults; promotes habitat restoration, trail building, and maintenance; and works to build an enduring ethic of stewardship. The Conservancy focuses on the American River and Cosumnes River watersheds. To date, it has protected habitat, native fisheries, and scenic vistas on more than 12,000 acres.
Center for Land Based Learning
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Center for Land Based Learning teaches California’s youth and the next generation of farmers about the importance of environmentally sound farming and watershed conservation. Interns work on a variety of habitat restoration projects and learn about related scientific concepts—why and how each task relates to the productive intersection of agriculture, conservation, and sustainability.
Ceres Community Project
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Ceres Community Project works to reestablish locally grown, organic food as a cornerstone of health. The Project provides people who are facing life-threatening illnesses with nourishing meals and, at the same time, gives teens the opportunity to grow and prepare healthy food, and educates the larger community about the connection between food, healing, and wellness. To date, Ceres teen chefs have provided 83,000 meals to families in five counties. The Project model is currently being developed in three other states.
Clínica Verde
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Clínica Verde (“Green Clinic”) simultaneously supports kids, moms, and the Earth. The clinic provides maternal and infant healthcare in Nicaragua (the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere) in an environmentally friendly building that was designed to improve the health of the local community, save energy, and conserve resources. (The Clínica Verde model also was designed so that it could be replicated in other countries.)
Community Water Center
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Community Water Center seeks to ensure that communities in California’s San Joaquin Valley have access to safe, clean, and affordable water. Water quality in the area suffers due to groundwater pollution, which is linked to decades of intensive fertilizer and pesticide application as well as the influx of animal factories to the region. The Center acts to empower local residents through education, advocacy, and legal assistance.
Exploring New Horizons
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Exploring New Horizons (ENH) provides high quality, affordable environmental education for the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The curriculum focuses on environmental awareness and natural history, cooperation and team building, and self-esteem and citizenship. Annually, over 8,000 students from 90 schools participate in ENH programs. Since its inception in 1979, ENH has reached over 80,000 elementary and middle school students.
Friends of the Urban Forest
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Friends of the Urban Forest promote large, healthy forests in San Francisco through community planting, tree care, education, and advocacy. The Friends obtain permits; select, purchase and deliver trees; supply tools and materials; remove sidewalk concrete; and volunteer side-by-side with residents. They plant nearly 1,000 trees each year.
George Mark Children's House
GRANTEE PROFILE:
George Mark Children's House offers comprehensive, compassionate, and leading-edge care to children—and their families—who are facing chronic, life-limiting illnesses. Its programs are intended to relieve suffering while achieving the best quality of life possible, as defined in partnership with the family. George Mark Children’s House is the first and only freestanding residential pediatric palliative care center in the United States.
Green Schools
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Green Schools works to catalyze “green” actions by kids, teachers, parents, and policymakers to improve the environmental health and ecological sustainability of U.S. schools. It acts to leverage the schools’ sector to transform the school environment—and the markets that supply them—to improve health and sustainability by eliminating toxins, using resources sustainably, creating green spaces and buildings, serving healthy food, and teaching stewardship.
International Development Exchange
GRANTEE PROFILE:
International Development Exchange (IDEX) promotes sustainable solutions to poverty by providing long-term grants and other resources to locally run organizations. IDEX’s international development model, inspired by returning Peace Corps volunteers, centers around small grants targeting grassroots groups that are trusted by their neighbors and that understand the needs of their own communities. IDEX’s initiatives involve entire communities in building local economies, empowering women, protecting the environment, creating food security, and promoting local leadership in Guatemala, India, Mexico, Nepal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
Medic Mobile
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Medic Mobile uses appropriate technologies to create coordinated health systems that allow health care workers in remote areas of developing countries to save lives. By developing and extending existing open-source platforms, Medic Mobile allows health workers traveling to isolated patients to stay connected with central clinics. Advanced communications technologies combined with minimal infrastructure requirements support community mobilizations for vaccination and satellite clinics, logistics and supply chain management, referrals, and routine data collection.
Mission Graduates
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Mission Graduates aims to increase the number of college graduates from San Francisco’s ethnically mixed, low-income Mission District as a means to achieve economic equity and strengthen the fabric of the Mission community. It offers a range of K-12 after-school, in-school, and summer programs that reach over 1,100 children, youth, and families each year, with college education as an “end goal” that’s woven through all academic enrichment programs.
OBUGS
GRANTEE PROFILE:
OBUGS (Oakland Based Urban Gardens) reaches over 400 children each week through a network of school and neighborhood gardens, green spaces, and farmers' markets. In partnerships with West and North Oakland schools, OBUGS offers in-school, afterschool, volunteer, and internship programs and summer camps at seven gardens that emphasize hands-on educational activities. OBUGS has served more than 2,000 children from preschool through middle school since its inception (and 400 adults through related events).
Outdoor Outreach
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Outdoor Outreach empowers underprivileged youth through comprehensive outdoor education and hands-on learning experiences. Through short trips to local mountains and beaches or more comprehensive multi-year curricula, Outdoor Outreach offers underserved youth the opportunity to develop a passion and joy in the outdoors that can inspire positive changes in their lives. To date, it has provided more than 5000 at-risk youth in San Diego County with the support and relationships they need to become successful adults.
Petaluma Bounty
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Petaluma Bounty helps local residents grow their own healthy food, redistributes surplus food, and provides affordable fresh food to low-income families and seniors. Core programs include the Bounty Hunters food gleaning program, an educational urban farm, weekly boxes of organic fruits and vegetables sold at wholesale prices to low-income families, and custom designed, permaculture-inspired food forests.
Pogo Park
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Pogo Park is a community-based nonprofit group working to rebuild the Elm Playlot, a half-acre park in an inner-city neighborhood burdened by crime and poverty. By engaging local residents in the re-design and re-building of Elm Playlot, Pogo Park works as a catalyst for both child development and community development, and serves as a new model for how to reinvigorate inner-city parks and playgrounds.
Save Mt. Diablo
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Save Mt. Diablo works to protect the land on and around Mount Diablo. Currently half of the area is preserved and the other half is at risk of being lost. Save Mt. Diablo conserves land through purchases, gifts, and cooperative efforts with public and private entities. The group also educates the public regarding the history and heritage of the mountain, its surrounding foothills and its watersheds.
Save the Bay
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Save the Bay protects San Francisco Bay from pollution and sprawl; restores habitat; and engages and inspires more than 25,000 supporters annually. For nearly 50 years, it has fought to stop raw sewage flowing untreated into the Bay, to prevent the Peripheral Canal from draining more of the Bay’s fresh water from upstream, and to close the garbage dumps ringing the shoreline. As a result, the size of the Bay has actually increased slightly, and public shoreline access has increased from four miles in 1969 to over 200 miles today.
Seacology
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Seacology preserves the highly endangered and rapidly disappearing biodiversity of the earth’s islands. The nonprofit works closely with islanders to conserve their natural resources and create crucial support systems. To date, Seacology has saved nearly 164,000 acres of island terrestrial habitat and over 1,800,000 acres of coral reef and marine habitat, and built or funded 80 schools, community centers, and other essential facilities.
Slide Ranch
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Slide Ranch is a nonprofit teaching farm located at a historic coastal dairy. The Ranch uses its organic gardens as well as its goats, sheep, chickens, and ducks to teach an appreciation for fresh healthy food, and the farms that grow it. Each year, thousands of Bay Area residents participate in Ranch Programs and learn about growing and preparing nutritious foods, and how to use natural resources sustainably.
Urban Biofilter
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Urban Biofilter implements innovative green infrastructures and biological systems solutions in environmentally degraded urban neighborhoods. Urban Biofilter designs green spaces that provide quantifiable ecosystem services—air, soil, and water filtration; heat mitigation; and climate change preparation—for residents of West Oakland and other urban communities. Programs such as the West Oakland Greenbelt Campaign, Green Collar Jobs, and Urban Timber empower communities to make momentous changes in their own neighborhoods.
Urban Tilth
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Urban Tilth helps to build a healthier food system in west Contra Costa County. The group works with schools, community-based organizations, government agencies, businesses, and individuals to develop the capacity to produce 5% of their food supply. Urban Tilth trains and employs local people, establishes cross sector coalitions, engages in local policy decisions, and grows food using permaculture principles (waste reduction, and water and soil conservation, preservation and restoration).
Kids on Bikes
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Kids on Bikes enables under-served children to experience the benefits (freedom, self-confidence, and a healthy lifestyle) of owning their first bicycle.
Rocky Mountain Fields Institute
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Rocky Mountain Fields Institute addresses critical land preservation and restoration needs in the Southern Rocky Mountains and Colorado Plateau. They provide hands-on learning opportunities and integrate education, research, and environmental stewardship into restoration projects for key natural areas.
Save the Poudre
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Save the Poudre works to restore the Cache la Poudre River to a healthy and vibrant condition by stopping destructive water projects, hosting river cleanups, and expanding scientific research about the Poudre’s ecological and economic role in Northern Colorado.
SOS Outreach
GRANTEE PROFILE:
SOS Outreach offers youth the opportunity to build character and self-esteem through outdoor adventure. Students practice an outdoor sport and explore SOS core values: courage, discipline, integrity, wisdom, and compassion.
Thorne Ecological Institute
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Thorne Ecological Institute educates business, government, and professional leaders about the principles of ecology and how they relate to economics, human welfare, and the health of the environment. Currently, the Institute focuses on building earth stewardship by connecting thousands of kids to nature through hands-on environmental education.
Colorado Mountain Club
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Colorado Mountain Club connects students, explorers, and others who love the Colorado Rockies. The Club seeks to improve people's lives as well as the environment through the preservation and dissemination of information about science, literature, art, and recreation relating to the mountains. Through their Youth Education Program, they offer thousands of young people a comprehensive education program that includes science, math, and hands-on conservation activities.
cityWILD
GRANTEE PROFILE:
cityWILD provides tuition-free, experiential outdoor education for at-risk youth. The group assists students between the ages of 10 and 18 in northeast Denver through programs such as Teen Workforce Readiness, Weekend Adventure, Summer Expeditions, and Afterschool. The cityWILD model encourages students to make healthy life decisions by promoting personal empowerment, leadership development, and community participation.
Chicago Rarities Orchard Project
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Chicago Rarities Orchard Project supports the establishment of rare-fruit orchards in reclaimed urban spaces. By filling empty lots with orchards, the Project will foster varieties of tree fruit that aren't commonly grown commercially, while creating urban green space, and educational opportunities for local children. Fruit from the orchard will help fund the Project and also will be distributed throughout the local community.
Louisiana Bucket Brigade
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Louisiana Bucket Brigade works with communities neighboring the state's oil refineries and chemical plants to create informed, sustainable communities free from industrial pollution. Programs include the Fenceline Neighbors Network, the Refinery Efficiency Initiative, and the Oil Spill Crisis Map, which tracks the impact of the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
New Orleans Food & Farm Network
GRANTEE PROFILE:
New Orleans Food & Farm Network addresses the city’s need for affordable and locally grown fresh produce. The Network focuses on underserved neighborhoods with limited access to fresh food, creates projects specific to each neighborhood’s identity and resources, and emphasizes food-growing gardens in backyards, schools, and churches. By cleaning up spaces, providing jobs, and growing good food, New Orleans’ neighborhoods-in-need can play a key role in revitalizing the city.
Bikes Not Bombs
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Bikes Not Bombs is a nexus for bicycle recycling and community empowerment in lower income neighborhoods of Boston and overseas. They operate Earn-A-Bike and technical training programs in Boston, and donate thousands of recycled bikes to assist economic development projects (micro-enterprise bike businesses, sustainable technology projects, and youth training programs) in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa.
Cape Ann Farmers’ Market
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Cape Ann Farmers’ Market works to provide fresh, nutritious food – produced with environmentally benign methods and delivered with a smaller carbon footprint – for their entire community, regardless of income. Buying local means food dollars stay local.
The Marion Institute
GRANTEE PROFILE:
The Marion Institute identifies innovative initiatives designed to benefit people and the planet, and supports their development from their earliest stages toward their full potential. The Institute’s Serendipity Projects explore the core causes of a diverse range of issues in order to foster deep, positive change, and include the Green Belt Movement (winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize), Yoga Kids, and Sponsored Arts For Education (S.A.F.E.). Institute programs include the Biological Medicine Network, the Gaviotas Carbon Offset Initiative, and the Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative.
Sustainable Nantucket
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Sustainable Nantucket integrates sustainable food production, processing, distribution, and consumption to enhance the overall environmental, economic, and social health of the island. Through programs such as Farm to School, Farmers and Artisans Market, and Community Agriculture, it supports a more locally based, self-reliant food economy.
Appropriate Technology Collaborative
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Appropriate Technology Collaborative (ATC) creates sustainable technologies that promote economic growth while improving the quality of life for low-income people worldwide. ATC collaborates with local residents and nonprofits to create market based solutions that are culturally sensitive, environmentally responsible, and locally repairable. To date, the group has served an estimated 4,500 people and its breakthrough designs—including Solar Vaccine Refrigerators, Treadle Pumps, and Bamboo Reinforced Concrete—have been downloaded by over 3,000 people, nonprofits, and governments in 23 countries.
Land Stewardship Project
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Land Stewardship Project promotes sustainable agriculture and ethical stewardship of farmland through cultural programs and a farmer-to-farmer network that helps farmers move to more sustainable farming methods. They also help communities stop factory farms, link sustainable livestock producers to potential urban customers, and support federal policies advocating for farming alternatives that benefit farmers and the land.
Great River Greening
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Great River Greening conserves critical land habitat, protects clean air and water, and increases urban residents’ access to sustainable open space. Since 1995, it has engaged over 25,000 volunteers; partnered with more than 400 landowners, businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies; planted more than 60,000 trees and shrubs, and restored 4,000 acres.
EarthDance
GRANTEE PROFILE:
EarthDance focuses on growing and inspiring local FARMS – Food, Art, Relationships, and Music. They operate an apprenticeship program at the historic Mueller Organic Farm that trains local residents in soil fertility principles, organic pest and disease management, proper harvest and post-harvest handling techniques, direct marketing, and CSA operations. Graduates have gone on to farm school gardens, CSA Farms, and backyard gardens.
Red Feather Development Group
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Red Feather Development Group partners with American Indian communities to address their severe housing crises. They teach home construction, build straw bale homes, facilitate home ownership, foster environmentally relevant practices, and enable cooperation and understanding among cultures.
Clark Fork Coalition
GRANTEE PROFILE:
The Clark Fork Coalition works to improve the health of the 22,000-square-mile Clark Fork River basin. The Coalition works with citizens, scientists, landowners, business leaders, and public officials to deliver enduring conservation results that integrate environmental advocacy and community-building. Over the past 25-years, the Coalition has been instrumental in shaping decisions to remove dams and contaminated mining waste, to invest $250 million in cleaning up mining pollution, and to block the Rock Creek Mine proposal.
Tahoe Rim Trail Association
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Tahoe Rim Trail Association maintains and enhances the Tahoe Rim Trail system, which passes through three national forests, three wilderness areas, and one state park. The Association encourages environmental stewardship through volunteer programs, educational outreach, and community partnerships, and connects local high school student to the trails through a Youth Backcountry Scholarship Program.
Pedals for Progress
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Pedals for Progress rescues bicycles destined for U.S. landfills and ships them to developing countries where they are sold inexpensively and become sorely needed forms of transportation and integral components of micro-businesses. Proceeds from bike sales fund local community programs as well as subsequent shipments of bicycles.
Pedals for Progress
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Pedals for Progress rescues bicycles destined for overburdened U.S. landfills and ships them to developing countries where they’re highly valued as inexpensive transportation. Pedals for Progress donates the first shipment of bicycles to a local nonprofit partner, who sells the bikes far below market value so that the people most in need can afford them. Enough money is raised from those sales to pay both for subsequent shipments and to fund other critical community programs. To date, Pedals for Progress has donated more than 133,000 bicycles in 33 countries.
Explainer Program at the New York Botanical Garden
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Explainer Program at the New York Botanical Garden provides students with the opportunity to strengthen their understanding of science and the environment, gain practical work experience, and develop problem-solving and interpersonal skills. The Garden is located in one of the nation’s most underserved communities, and the Explainer Program provides local youth with a safe environment for learning and professional development.
Truck Farm
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Truck Farm – a 1986 Dodge pickup with a mini-farm planted in the truck bed – travels from school to school teaching kids about farming and healthy food, engaging them in thinking about where food comes from, and getting them excited about growing food themselves.
Queens County Farm Museum
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Queens County Farm Museum is the only working historical farm in New York City, and the longest continuously farmed site in New York State – the Farm, which dates to 1697, includes a greenhouse, livestock, farm vehicles, planting fields, an orchard and a herb garden. Through programs and events, they educate the public about Queens County's agricultural and horticultural past, and present-day sustainability practices.
Friends of Van Cortlandt Park
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Friends of Van Cortlandt Park was founded by Bronx, New York residents in response to dramatic cuts in New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation’s budget. Over the past twenty years, the Friends have provided high quality environmental education programs for underserved youth in New York City and Yonkers. They’ve also worked to understand and address the Park’s critical needs, raise funds for its restoration, and expand the constituency of those who care about it.
Abundance Foundation
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Abundance Foundation educates the public on sustainability – renewable energy, local food, clean water, conservation and community – through DIY workshops, a new community garden, and programs such as the amazing Pittsboro pepper festival.
World Neighbors
GRANTEE PROFILE:
World Neighbors strives to eliminate hunger, poverty, and disease in isolated rural villages in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. They do not give away food or material aid, but provide people and communities with knowledge and training in agriculture, literacy, water, health, and environmental protection so that they can create their own life-changing solutions.
Focus the Nation
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Focus the Nation creates opportunities for young leaders throughout the U.S. to interface with elected and business leaders about building a clean energy economy.
Grow Portland
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Grow Portland expands urban gardening and agriculture by connecting diverse populations with knowledge, supplies, and land.
Food Waves
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Food Waves promotes sustainable agriculture as a long-term solution to health and environmental problems. They offer future farmers the technical and financial support they need to learn organic farming practices, supply local food banks with organic fruits and vegetable, and provide low-income families with materials and training so that they can grow their own food.
Pedal Power
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Pedal Power helps put the “cycle” in recycle. They provide low cost transportation options to students, micro-businesses, health care workers, and others in developing nations (and in the great state of Texas) by recycling and reusing bicycles and their parts.
Puente a la Salud Comunitaria
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Puente a la Salud Comunitaria advances the health and economies of rural communities in Mexico. Through their Healthy Families and Eco-Amaranth programs, Puente works with subsistence farmers to produce nutritious crops using sustainable, environmentally sound methods; to combat malnutrition; and to raise community awareness about principles of food sovereignty and a healthy diet.
Four Corners School of Outdoor Education
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Four Corners School of Outdoor Education sponsors hands-on outdoor projects to conserve the natural and cultural treasures of the Colorado Plateau. Programs include outdoor education; repair or rehabilitation of roads, springs, and trails; and protective actions for over 28 archaeological sites.
Center for Health, Environment, and Justice
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Center for Health, Environment, and Justice collaborates with communities nationwide that are facing environmental health threats such as leaking landfills, polluted drinking water, and hazardous waste sites. CHEJ helps local groups research the extent of their problem, break it down into manageable “action steps,” and develop the skills and knowledge they need to bring about positive change and create a healthier environment.
North Cascades Institute
GRANTEE PROFILE:
North Cascades Institute works to conserve and restore Northwest environments through education – science, art, literature, and hands-on study of natural and cultural history. They offer school and summer youth programs, teacher internships, volunteer stewardship programs, a M.Ed. in environmental education, and operate the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center.
FUNDED BY CLIF BAR & COMPANY
©2011 CLIF BAR FAMILY FOUNDATION