Exciting news! We just made our 10,000th grant.
We would not have been able to achieve this milestone without the help of our network of advisors who have eyes and ears on the ground making it possible to find and invest in groups deeply rooted in communities and committed to a sustainable future. We’d also like to extend our gratitude to the hardworking grantees, our staff, and to our supporters and widespread global community.
While 10,000 is an intangible number, each grant made has helped real people on the ground take action to make this world a better place.
Chair of our Board of Directors, Nnimmo Bassey, says, “I imagine each community action for the planet as a life-giving drop of rain. As more drops fall, turning into showers and downpours, they gain force and can change the landscape, leading to powerful rivers and oceans that cannot be stopped.”
A few of these outstanding organizations are highlighted below.
1) Japan: Reconnecting Children with Nature
Following the tsunami and nuclear disaster that impacted Fukushima, Japan, in 2011, children who live in impacted areas have limited outside play time and are required to wear special shoe coverings to protect them from radiation. Unfortunately, their contact with nature has been drastically reduced since the disaster. The Fukushima Kids Dolphin Camp will use $2,500 to bring children from Fukushima who have been affected to a camp on Miyake Island, Japan where they can reconnect with nature, and participate in activities such as hiking, yoga, and swimming with local bottlenose dolphins.
2) Kenya: Youth for Lake Turkana
Using $4,470, a Kenyan youth organization called #SaveLakeTurkana plans to bring the environmental and social issues facing Kenya’s Lake Turkana to national attention. The lake is under threat from multiple hydropower and irrigation projects, but the majority of the 300,000 indigenous people living around the lake are unaware of the threats facing their land and livelihoods. #SaveLakeTurkana will host a public forum in Nairobi and lead a peaceful march to bring attention to this pressing issue.
3) Uganda: Women, Water, and Sanitation
The Uganda Women’s Water Initiative will use $4,000 to sponsor a new class of female grassroots activists through its three-year Women and Water Training program. This program just graduated its inaugural class in August 2015, and has had a proven impact helping people in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. So far the program has trained over 200 women in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) technologies and strategies that have enabled them to provide clean water and sanitation facilities to over 30,000 people.
4) Chile: Sustainable Fish Farming
The Atlantic salmon is an exotic species introduced into Chilean waters and has a high impact on the aquatic biodiversity of the area, depleting wild fish stocks and leading to the deaths of natural predators. The salmon cultivation industry has increased the amount of antibiotics used in salmon farming by 25 percent resulting in an unsustainable and environmentally harmful practice. The increase in exportation has also led to the farms expanding into coastal Patagonia regions, intruding on small indigenous communities and untouched, pristine wilderness. Centro Ecoceanos will use funds to start a campaign to raise public awareness and citizen participation in order to strengthen an alliance among consumers, indigenous coastal communities and small-scale fisherfolk.
5) Colombia: Protecting the Sierra Nevadas
Confederación indígena Tyrona will use $5,000 to strengthen legal regulations on extractive industries in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada, particularly as it relates to the rights and livelihoods of the region’s indigenous peoples. The Sierra Nevada desert is a sacred place for many indigenous communities, and provides the natural resources for their livelihoods. The group will use the funds to initiate a community dialogue surrounding this issue, exploring ways in which communities can take action. The organization will also work to create a legal protocol that binds extractive companies to seek local consultation before implementing large-scale projects in the area.
6) Myanmar: Studying the Impact of Dams
Advancing Life and Regenerating Motherland will use $7,500 to examine the impacts of hydropower developments in Laos and China on the communities and ecosystems of the Mekong Delta. Funds will allow six journalists to travel from Myanmar to Vietnam to visit areas affected by upstream dams, such as the Myitsone. Journalists will meet with communities, researchers, and other stakeholders to understand the impacts of hydropower dams on agriculture, water quality, fisheries and wetlands, and the importance of free flowing rivers in sustaining human and ecological systems. The journalists will share this information with the public and policymakers in Myanmar to inform decisions on the Myitsone and other proposed dams.
7) Indonesia: Protecting Local Elephants
The Balai Raja Wildlife Reserve in Indonesia was designated as a conservation area in 1986 and covered 45,000 acres. However, there are now fewer than 500 acres of forested area to provide sanctuary for local elephants. Most of the originally designated area is now covered by palm oil, pulp, and paper plantations. Many of the large plantations have installed electric fences or trenches to keep elephants out, which has led to increased contact between the elephants and local farmers and resulted in the trampling of crops and injuries and death of both human and elephants. With $2,500 the Rimba Satwa Foundation aims to restore 12 acres of common land forest to create a corridor to help guide the elephants towards intact forest and water sources and away from local farms.
8) Nigeria: Recovering the Ken Saro-Wiwa Memorial Bus
The Ken Saro-Wiwa Memorial Bus is a sculpture created in remembrance of the struggles of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni environmental rights activists who were sentenced to death in 1995 by a military tribunal under the dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. Ogoni land is a region of the Niger Delta in Nigeria that is rich in both arable farm land and large deposits of crude oil, and has been exploited by large oil companies, resulting in widespread environmental and economic devastation that has destroyed land and livelihoods. The memorial bus sculpture was created by Nigerian artist Sokari Douglas Camp and was on display in the United Kingdom for nine years. In September 2015 the bus was shipped back to Nigeria, only to be impounded upon arrival by custom officials. The People’s Advancement Centre in Nigeria will use $5,000 to recover the confiscated bus. When recovered, the bus will serve as a campaigning tool for use against continued oil extraction in Ogoniland.
9) Alaska, United States of America: A Youth-led Fight Against Rising Seas In the Arctic
The Arctic Youth Ambassadors Program is a group of indigenous youth from Shishmaref, Alaska, a coastal Arctic community which recently voted to relocate their village to escape rising sea levels and the impacts of climate change. The organization will use $5,000 to create and disseminate a youth-led video about the impacts on the town, screen the video at public events, and share it through social media in an effort to raise awareness surrounding climate change and issues facing arctic communities. Shishmaref is a subsistence-dependent community made up almost entirely of indigenous Inupiaq Eskimos. Since the 1950’s, the island of Shishmaref has lost between 2,500 and 3,000 feet of land due to coastal erosion, and scientific studies have shown that climate change is affecting caribou, moose, seal, and walrus populations, which the community relies upon.
10) Federated States of Micronesia: Sustainable Trash Collection and Improved Water Quality
Kousapw Poahloang, a group in the Federated States of Micronesia, will use $5,000 to restore five rivers they depend on for fishing and tourism in Paohloang, Pohnpei State, Micronesia. Unfortunately, solid and animal waste has contaminated the rivers, making them unsafe. Families are on their own to deal with solid waste, and a lack of proper transportation causes them to use the rivers as a trash bin. To improve the water quality they will organize local fishing communities and youth to do a general trash clean up along the rivers, assist the municipal government in establishing community trash stations so that each household can put their trash within easy access of the municipal solid waste collection vehicle, and create a small, revolving fund to assist families in relocating their pig pens from the river’s edge so they may start following EPA guidelines.
Photos: Let’s Go Kenya, Fukushima Kids Dolphin Camp, Arctic Youth Ambassadors Program