Featured Grants

Information highlighting some of Cottonwood Foundation's recently awarded grants can be found in the Annual Report and Newsletter sections on this web site. This page features a few organizations funded in 2002.

Featured Grants from 2002
(from among 40 grant recipients selected from 507 applications received):


Nabichakha Women Group, Kenya
The seriousness of the environmental damage that is occurring at an alarming rate on the African continent in general and in Kenya in particular has been a result of unprecendented population growth and displacement, severe drought, environmentally unsound agricultural practices and the absence of regulation, protection and conservation in the exploitation of natural resources.

Nabichakha Women Group is a small grassroots organization that aims to engage in small-scale self-help initiatives seeking to preserve their scarce natural resource base. The Group is working to set up tree nurseries, with trees being planted at a water spring to protect the water catchment watershed, and with the trees acting as windbreaks and facilitating soil and water conservation. This forestation project will ensure that trees are planted for environmental usefulness as well as profitability - with fruit trees and firewood being resources that address indigenous utility and serve as efficient sources of fuel.

$1,000 was provided by Cottonwood Foundation to Nabichakha Women Group in April 2002 and designated specifically for the purpose of helping the group undertake a forestation program, including setting up tree nurseries, establishing tree lots, and planting trees.

Porter's Progress, Nepal
Porters' Progress (www.portersprogress.org) works to assist the amazing men and women who support the trekking industry of Nepal on their backs. Porters lighten the hearts of, and shoulder the load for, the hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors that come to Nepal each year. The money generated by this industry is vital to the cash-starved economies of rural Nepal.

However, porters are dying or being crippled because proper equipment and rescue facilities are not made available to them. They are dying each year from preventable altitude and cold-related illnesses. Many others are crippled by frostbite or snow blindness.

Porters' Progress was formed as a response to these tragic events. It works to facilitate the safe treatment, education and empowerment of Nepali mountain porters though its programs in Nepal. The programs of Porters' Progress focus upon ideas generated by the porters themselves, and include English and Empowerment Classes, a Cottage Industry Initiative, a Clothing Lending Program, a Stove Lending Program, and outreach and awareness activities.

A grant of $1,000 was provided by Cottonwood Foundation to Porters' Progress in April 2002 to be designated for the purpose of covering a year of English and Empowerment class expenses, funding the Stove Lending Program, and contributing to covering the organization's small general office expenses in Nepal.

Vivamos Mejor, USA/Mexico
The mission of Vivamos Mejor is to help people of limited means in Mexico help themselves to a better life. Since 1988, Vivamos Mejor has worked in the vicininty of Xalapa, the capital of the State of Veracruz. It is almost completely an all-volunteer organization.

Its activities are chosen in terms of needs as perceived by the local inhabitants. Projects include Pre-school Education, Environmental Projects (such as a Coffee Pulp Waste Conversion Project), and Community and Educational Activities.

Recently, Vivamos Mejor has been constructing a new child care center on property donated by the municipality of El Tronconal, Veracruz, Mexico. By remodeling an abandoned former factory on the property for use for the center, it has been able to save a substantial amount of funds. The center will accomodate about 20 - 30 children, mostly two and three-year olds.

A grant of $1,000 was provided from Cottonwood Foundation to Vivamos Mejor in April 2002 specifically for the purpose of furnishing the new child care center with furniture, school supplies, and kitchen appliances.

White Earth Land Recovery Project/USA
White Earth Land Recovery Project (www.welrp.org) is a grassroots Native American environmental, educational and advocacy organization based at the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota. Its mission is to facilitate recovery of the original land base of the White Earth Indian Reservation (overall, only about 9% of the land on the reservation is held by the tribe), to preserve and restore traditional Native practices of sound land stewardship, to support community development and language fluency, and to strengthen their people's spiritual and cultural heritage.

Through their land reclamation efforts, the organization now holds 1,500 acres of land as the White Earth Land Recovery Project Land Trust. They continue to work to purchase large, pristine parcels of land, some of which had been taken from Native ownership by timber companies or stolen by land speculators. The Project is working to obtain land which is important to the traditional culture, and which can allow for obtaining traditional medicines from forests, growing ancient varieties of corn, providing land for their buffalo herd, and maintaining access to wild rice and sugar maples.

A grant of $1,000 was provided to White Earth Land Recovery Project by Cottonwood Foundation in April 2002 specifically to be designated for the purchase of land on the White Earth Reservation. This grant was awarded from Cottonwood Foundation's Land Fund, which provides funding to support indigenous peoples' organizations repurchasing their land base to preserve their culture and environment.




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