Ideas don’t just magically appear. They are created with intentions, perseverance, and hopefully some joy. Take look at some of the amazing programs we are providing grant support for. If you like the work that our grantees are doing, feel free to make your own direct donations to these organizations to help support them if you’re so inclined!
Circle of Dreams Foundation awards grant to Friends of Youth and Nature. Located in Colorado, we are helping FOYAN to expand their environmental education for our local Western Slope youth and community. We’re helping them increase their programs to get kids outdoors and spend more time in Nature’s Commons.
To find out more about the various programs FOYAN provides, check them out!
Circle of Dreams Foundation awards multi-year grant to Reef Renewal Foundation Curaçao . We are supporting both a restoration effort to expand RRFC’s current multi species including out-planting of Staghorn and Elkhorn corals on what is now called the ‘Colorado’ reef project. We’re also sponsoring Marine Biology undergraduate students with internships to help with education and awareness efforts and develop RRFC’s intern program.
To find out more about how you can help the coral reefs or visit Reef Renewal Curacao to get certified as a reef renewal diver, visit them here.
Circle of Dreams Foundation awards grant to The Youth Garden Project in Moab,UT for their afterschool garden clubs. The Youth Garden Project hosts one or two afterschool clubs each week depending on the season! Families sign-up their kids through and program themes vary each trimester. Students participate in a variety of activities including: hunting for bugs & insects, harvesting & planting, cooking with garden ingredients, exploring various art forms, games & free play around our 1.5 acre garden space . We also provided the funds for the Nibble Garden Guest register! The Nibble Garden is roughly 2800 square feet of walkways and growing space where we grow herbs, vegetables, and cut flowers. Anyone walking along the Mill Creek Bike Path can harvest and take fresh items home to use in their meals or gift to a friend.
To find out more about all the programs being offered, visit The Youth Garden Project.
Circle of Dreams Foundation awards grant to Artists for Soup for a pilot program Food and Forest: Building Back Soil, Biodiversity and Food Security. Artists for Soup sees the exchange of local knowledge and science-based strategies as central to transforming food systems. The support for a ten-woman, environmentally focused, multi-dimensional workshop to be held at the Artists for Soup (AfS) demonstration center in Corozo, Nicaragua, an Indigenous region near the city of Matagalpa. This workshop would be an opportunity to support groups of women as they adapt well-supported strategies for including new approaches to increase productivity in their home garden operations. During the four days of the workshop, participants would be included in the skills building and collaboration with the following activities: 1) making solar food driers, 2) learning best practices for storing surplus solar dried produce, 3) practicing inclusion of dark greens into traditional Nicaraguan foods, 4) participating in hands-on work with commercial compost operations and learning how to duplicate at women’s homes, 5) training in how to care for laying hens as part of the compost project with an option of incorporating this practice at a home site, 6) cooking a biodiverse meal each day on fuel-efficient stoves at our kitchen, and 7) learning, best practices for increasing at-home seed-saving, nurturing pollinators, and cultivating traditional medicinal plants.
To find out more about the work being done by Artists for Soup and how you can help, visit the Artists for Soup.
Circle of Dreams Foundation awards grant to Second Chance Humane Society to help support the Living Better Together program. Families and individuals facing economic challenges and hardship often depend greatly upon their companion animals for social and emotional support. Barriers to veterinary care and behavioral training impacts the life of their pets and the family’s overall well-being. The most significant barriers in maintaining lifetime care for pets, particularly for families that are struggling financially, is access to veterinary care. The cost of veterinary care for many families is beyond reach. For families in the remote and underserved region of western Montrose County (the West End), specifically Naturita and Nucla, it is also physically out of reach. Accessing vet care can require a three-hour round trip. As a result, many pets are not receiving basic medical
care or are being relinquished or abandoned. Providing high-quality, low-cost veterinary services directly to our service region will address these issues. The Living Better Together program helps the entire tri-county service region via an onsite medical clinic located at our Animal Resource Center in Ridgway, and by bringing community veterinary wellness clinics directly to the West End.
To find out more about all the services and how you can help the four-legged’s, visit the Second Chance Humane Society .
Circle of Dreams Foundation awards grant to Great Old Broads for Wilderness to help support the Northern San Juan Broadband chapter. Great Old Broads for Wilderness (Broads) is a national grassroots organization, led by women, that engages and inspires activism to preserve and protect wilderness and wild lands. Broad’s key program is the Grassroots Leadership Program, which oversees and guides our Broadband chapters. Broadbands are member-run regional or local chapters across the country formed around Broads’ mission to preserve and protect wilderness and wild lands. These chapters, led by volunteer leaders and co-leader teams, are made up of passionate and dedicated Broads and Bros of diverse backgrounds and ages, with a fire for change and a love for the land.
Circle of Dreams is excited to be supporting the following programs of the Northern San Juan Colorado Broadband chapter: monthly Riverwatch monitoring project of the Uncompahgre River, Wilderness Leadership (WALTS) training, Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep monitoring, as well as for local Broadband members to participate in regional Rendezvous.
To find out more about the heart and soul of this organization or to get involved with a local Broadband chapter in your area, visit the Great Old Broads for Wilderness .
Circle of Dreams Foundation awards grant to Empowerment International (EI) to help get the “Amigos de Mi Ambiente” (AMA) (“Friends of the Environment”) program off the ground. This program will commence in the remote rural community of Santa Ana del los Malacos outside of the city of Granada, Nicaragua. As an educational organization serving over 310 children and their families, it is the goal of EI that the children and their families have the opportunity to develop the knowledge and skills they need to build a sustainable future.
EI shall create awareness about critical local environmental challenges through an understanding of the causes that lead to degradation of the local environment, through a series of interactive and dynamic classes. Practical, useful tools will be presented to the Santa Ana community for taking care of their environment and developing resilience strategies to overcome global climate change impacts. There will be three components to Amigos de Mi Ambiente :
- Education and Awareness: Providing the community with information to understand how their actions can hurt or improve environmental situations. EI will offer interactive workshops by local environmental advocates to members as well as enhance and integrate topics into the Natural Sciences class in the local primary school. This information will be disseminated via the public school and during monthly workshops for teens, young adults and parents.
- Critical Thinking: Using critical thinking methodology to find solutions to key environmental problems we found in Santa Ana community assessment in 2018. As a pilot project for an EI community-based program, the plan is to develop a baseline to include robust indicators to monitor and evaluate improvement. For this component, we set up practical ways to support the environment through everyday actions and have guest speakers who are involved in environmental activism in the country.
- Protection and environmental advocacy: Through the EI programs, start creating spaces to give tools to our beneficiaries to protect the environment and create awareness of our role in our ecosystems. The art program and photography club will expand our range of action with graphic ways to show how we affect the environment.
Here’s a link to all of the Empowerment International programs .
We’re happy to be able to support this project and will post progress on the program as we get updates.
If you’d like to learn more, you can also enjoy the TEDx talk given by one of our trustees, Sue Dreamweaver on Nature’s Commons.