We modelled the Alliance on healthy natural ecosystems, the most resilient systems on Earth. We prioritize relationships, and believe that everyone has a role to play. No one person, town, or Tribe can thrive and be resilient by themselves. And so…
We are a relationship-based organization, not a membership-based organization. All you have to do to be part of it is to share our vision of learning, planning, and acting together (and together with the rest of Nature) to ensure thriving.
To support this inclusive approach, we made a commitment to freedom from membership fees. So far, we have been able to keep our activities and gatherings free, also. A good old-fashioned pot-luck community ethic, and a willingness on the part of our organizational allies to help us out by sharing space and time is our “bread-and-butter.” (Thank you, Mashantucket Pequot Museum, DPNC, and Mystic Seaport, and private donors like you!)
$500 can purchase Art Supplies or Snacks for an event
$1000 supports one of our Co-Design Fellows running one Design Circle--engaged in learning, planning, and enacting the future we want--$5000 can support 5 of them!
$25,000 supports a part-time person or provides for a full-day conference
Working for the thriving of all of our watershed communities (human and beyond) is our passion and, it turns out, meets a shared yearning in many hearts. But it still takes time and skill to move toward our mission milestones together—to foster the relationships and run an organization that now has 350 members and over 50 organizational allies. The grant-writing alone is a full-time job. Then there’s communications. Volunteer organizing. Citizen-science and youth engagement. And most importantly, convening and resourcing both the leadership support and youth/community levels to bring about an unprecedented coordination and comprehensive approach to equity, environmental (public) health, and climate resilience, the Watershed Resilience Action Plan (WRAP).
You make the difference.
The Secret About Grants
They never cover everything, and then they run out. Receiving a grant opens a door to a new landscape of possibilities. If you don’t get the grants, the doors are not open. We have been tremendously successful in our grant-getting in our first year and a half. That’s because what we are trying to do is valuable, historic and precedent-setting. Our grantors include the EPA through Restore America’s Estuaries, Long Island Sound Study, CT SeaGrant/NOAA, the Network for Landscape Conservation, and the Community Foundation of Eastern CT, and CT-DEEP. These agencies are investing in our mission, and their excitement about our potential is opening the doors that get us closer to achieving our goals for 2025 and 2026. Here are two examples:
*Thanks to CT SeaGrant/Long Island Sound Study, we are completing a community-based Climate Vulnerability Assessment from I-95 north to Lantern Hill (the upper end of the Watershed), focusing on the impacts of heat and flooding and asking everyone (literally everyone) to participate. The grant pays the consultant to gather and analyze the data and to do a one-day event, but not the inclusive community listening, learning, and co-design that will need to happen over the next few months.
*Thanks to the EPA and Restore America’s Estuaries, we are able to facilitate 10 Design Circles, or opportunities to engage youth directly in the learning, planning, and action of the Watershed community. The grant covers the expenses of collaborating partners, and the facilitation of the events themselves, but not the all-important set-up and follow-up, which is different in every school or camp. Empowering youth can’t be done with a one-time encounter, and so funding the community impact of the youth-led solutions is on us. Same with the fact that these Design Circles are so effective, that there are already calls to do many more of them. And that is the whole idea.
The grants open the door to a new landscape of possibilities.
Please invest in the possibilities and the people to carry us there.
We aim to raise 15,000 from now until the end of the year. The next $7,000 of your end-of-year gifts will be matched thanks to two generous donors. Double your impact!
Comments