For Immediate Release: May 21, 2024
Media Contact: Reggie Rucker
Institute for Local Self-Reliance Awards $165,000 to Composters Serving BIPOC-Communities
[WASHINGTON, DC] – A green jobs reentry program for formerly incarcerated individuals, composting services for public housing residents, food sovereignty for Native families, and community education on composting as an environmental justice issue are just a few of the projects ILSR is funding through the BIPOC Community Composter Mini-Grant Program.
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is proud to announce the ten awardees of the 2024 BIPOC Community Composter Mini-Grant Program. Recipient organizations include nonprofits, farms, community gardens, Native Nations, and educational institutions in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Projects are diverse in scale and operation but are united in their mission-driven, innovative approach to community improvement.
11th Hour Racing’s support makes this opportunity possible. This BIPOC Community Composter Mini-Grant Program provided $165,000 in sub-grants to ten selected grantees, with a minimum grant of $5,000 and a maximum of $20,000.
“A dedicated focus on BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving community composters is long overdue,” said Brenda Platt, director of ILSR’s Composting for Community Initiative, about the grant program. “More than 60 groups in New England applied for almost a million dollars in funding, underscoring the substantial interest in linking composting to community empowerment in the region. We hope to continue and grow this program in the future.”
Najee Quashie, project manager of the Mini-Grant Program, noted, “When you think about the systemic discrimination that BIPOC groups have faced regarding land, environmental pollution, and wealth, this mini-grant program operates as a small token of power being put back into their hands. This program is a step toward saying to these groups that you matter. The program empowers these groups to be in communion with the land and forge a relationship with their community.”
The 2024 ILSR Composting Grant Awardees are:
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Bootstrap Compost (Everett, Mass.)
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Ceeds4Change (Randolph, Mass.)
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Ceiba Arbor (Salem, Conn.)
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Common Ground Urban Farm/New Haven Ecology Project (New Haven, Conn.)
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Garden Time, Inc. (Providence, R.I.)
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Global Village at Tuck Away Farm (Grafton, Mass.)
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Niweskok: From the Stars to Seeds (Milford, Maine)
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Penobscot Nation/Penobscot Tribal Farm (Indian Island, Maine)
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Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust (Cranston, R.I.)
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Root Life LLC (New Haven, Conn.)
Dishaun Harris, owner of Root Life LLC, said of receiving a grant, “The BIPOC Community Composter Mini-Grant program is a vital resource for helping to change the health narrative of our neighborhoods and enhancing the lives of the people who reside in these underserved, food apartheid communities. This funding will allow Root Life to build quality compost systems at four community farm sites in our city, educate and train local BIPOC residents on how to compost on various scales, and provide green jobs to encourage BIPOC residents to pursue composting careers in agriculture. All of this leads to more sustainable and more sovereign BIPOC communities!”
Schandra Madha, compost coordinator at the Common Ground Urban Farm, added, “Many of the student leaders I have the privilege of working alongside in my role as the Compost Coordinator at Common Ground have experienced systemic food insecurity and environmental racism. Where before, a loaf of bread in a trash bin might have represented to them a missed family meal or a relative with asthma worsened by incinerator-driven air pollution, composting on our campus every week has empowered them to create new outcomes and imagine better futures. The grant support provided to our project by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance ensures that we can keep up the work of nourishing the soil and diverting thousands of pounds of discarded food out of our waste streams, ultimately turning it into food for our community. Our composting program is a joyful, transformative, and healing process, and we are so grateful for this meaningful funding and support.”
For more information about the BIPOC Community Composter Mini-Grant Program awardees, please visit the ILSR website.
About the Institute for Local Self-Reliance
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, founded in 1974, is a national research, advocacy, and technical assistance organization that empowers communities to take charge of their local resources, economies, and environmental future. Through its Composting for Community Initiative, ILSR promotes distributed and diverse local composting across the country, aiming to cut food loss, enhance soils and watersheds, support local food production, and protect the climate while addressing community prosperity and equity.
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