The EPA is announcing the selection of 33 organizations to receive over $3.1 million in funding for projects under the Environmental Education Grants Program. Among the grant recipients are four Minority Serving Institutions. “We know that climate change is one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time, and it demands bold and innovative solutions,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “This year’s grant recipients represent some of the brightest minds from across the country, and they demonstrate what it means to couple the power of environmental education with a commitment to creating a future with clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet for all.”
The funding will range from $50,000 to $100,000, to organizations that provide environmental education activities and programs. This year’s grantees will conduct project activities in 27 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. This year’s education projects include:
- Using a one-of-a-kind 35’ x 27’ giant floor map of the Lake Champlain watershed to increase the capability of educators to use environmental education in their own teaching and increase stewardship behaviors in teachers and students at five Title I schools.
- Empowering students at an HBCU to utilize 21st century skills to address long-standing solid waste management issues in the Virgin Islands.
- Developing a program to increase opportunities for young people in the Pittsburgh area to be exposed to environmental careers and racially diverse environmental professionals, while completing projects that help to green communities and mitigate the effects of climate change.
- Creating innovative solutions to address the low resource recovery of demolition waste while educating the next generation of engineers at an HBCU to make more sustainable decisions related to this waste, which ~90% of is recyclable or reusable.
- Building ecological awareness, as well as introducing conservation practices and environmental careers to young adults from majority Latinx and African American communities on Chicago’s south side through a series of hands-on experiential learning opportunities.
- Expanding experimental place-based learning on bosque ecosystem heath to reach every seventh-grade student in New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley.
- Increasing education efforts to help communities build resilience to floods and wildfires in Colorado’s St. Vrain Watershed by developing a publicly accessible curriculum, offering workshops for teachers to implement the curriculum, and providing higher education and leadership opportunities.
- Educating Arizonans in 12 underserved communities about their groundwater conditions by developing a traveling, interactive groundwater exhibit.
- Fostering interconnectivity between formal environmental education curriculum and traditional knowledge of Alaskan indigenous communities by working with underserved communities to infuse traditional application into a culturally sustaining and place-based curriculum.
- Using salmon as a local phenomenon to educate approximately 2,400 eighth-grade students from Title I schools on critical watershed issues through lessons designed to increase student understanding of habitat water quality needs, think critically and brainstorm local stormwater pollution solutions, and take action to physically improve their schoolyard habitats.
The following organizations have been selected to receive this year’s EE Grants:
- Audubon Great Lakes
- Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania
- Bergen Community College
- Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program
- Chesapeake Conservancy
- Envirolution
- Environmental Science Center
- Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU)
- Green & Healthy Homes Initiative
- Groundwork Ohio River Valley
- Gulf of Maine Research Institute
- Hazon
- Kenai Watershed Forum
- Kentucky Association for Environmental Education
- Lake Champlain Maritime Museum
- Left Hand Watershed Center
- Maine Campus Compact
- Mountain Studies Institute
- Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association
- Ohio University
- Orange County Coastkeeper
- Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy
- Project WET Foundation
- Rowan University
- Sequoia Riverlands Trust
- University of Arizona
- University of Connecticut
- University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)
- University of Mississippi
- University of Nebraska-Lincoln
- University of the Virgin Islands
- Van Cortlandt Park Alliance
- Washington State University
EPA anticipates providing funding for these projects once all legal and administrative requirements are satisfied.