Open Hearts, Inclusive Minds

TPP grantees are masters at rekindling the spark that lives inside each and every one of us. They allow their communities to approach life with confidence, and challenge limiting societal views of what can and can not be achieved.

Through imagination and solid project execution, TPP grantees heal the world through environmental education, lending a hand to underserved groups and instilling youth with unwavering inner strength and creative drive.

Regardless of what has or has not been done, TPP grantees carve their own paths and welcome everyone to leave their unique footprint.

Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project

The Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project is one group of activists’ localized attempt to correct a broad misconception about LGBTQ history: that the only LGBTQ history that matters took place in large cities on the American coast. We believe that knowing about previous generations of LGBTQ community- and movement-building in our hometowns can reduce isolation and provide much-needed inspiration for future generations of activists. We also believe that LGBTQ movements in smaller cities and towns are not “behind” movements in larger cities, but are qualitatively different, because they face different circumstances. In this way, we believe local LGBTQ history projects like ours can promote LGBTQ survival, and help us build better movements and communities.

In the three years since our founding, the Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project has tapped into a deep hunger: for more local history, more diverse LGBTQ community events, more opportunities for intergenerational dialogue within the LGBTQ community.

We are also a local project with broad ambitions: we would love to build networks of local and regional LGBTQ history projects like ours. We want to magnify the findings of local LGBTQ history projects in order to collectively challenge the misconception that LGBTQ history only happened in New York City and San Francisco. In order to do that, we need to grow our team and our collective capacity to act. Thanks to the seed grant from The Pollination Project, we see a way forward to meet those ambitions.

James Hoot – Planet Vegan: The Worldwide Premiere

Planet Vegan is a multi-part documentary series taking a deep dive into the fastest growing social justice movement of the 21st century. The series acts as a welcoming and non-judgemental platform to educate the public on why millions of people are making a change in their habits for the betterment of the animals, the planet, and their own health. Top names featured in Season One include Rich Roll, PETA, Dr. Michael Greger, James Aspey, Beyond Meat, Chef Charity Morgan, Earthling Ed, Jon Venus, Dr. Neal Barnard, Anita Krajnc, and many, many more!

Nature Conservation Egypt (NCE) – Conservation Knowledge Hub

Raouf noticed that a zoology student interested in studying birds in Egypt has to personally contact Dr. Sherif Baha ElDin – the leading bird scholar – to coordinate for a home-visit to gain access to their impressive library, which has recent publications on birds alongside Arabic books on that same topic that date back to the 1960’s. What if such information was publicly accessible in a space where students from different disciplines, interests and research backgrounds can come together to talk and discuss Egypt’s biodiversity and its history of conservation?

Raouf has been working in the conservation field for 10+ years and has known the key figures in the field personally. For the last few months, he has gotten the approval of many of them to donate books to the library – Conservation Knowledge Hub – and talked with one of the leading conservation groups in Egypt, Nature Conservation Egypt, to donate a space.

This grant will help build a hub for the nature conservation community in Egypt. It will equip a space to host environmentalists, community members, conservation supporters, students, activists, startups, and interested individuals on a regular basis to gather, exchange, and learn together about issues threatening Egypt’s magnificent biodiversity. With a community-centered design, this space can be at the center of conservation events, meetings, and collaborations and its library can pave the way to informed conservation efforts in Egypt.

Jacob Garland – Gardening And Blogging For A Better-Educated Future

Jacob Garland, 16, has for the past two years been striving to improve his school’s and community’s focus on environmental protection and conservation, primarily through the creation of his school’s environmental club and his own personal blog. Now, he hopes to continue his efforts by expanding his school’s community garden, creating educational campaigns about environmental issues, and leading a beautification project on campus to make caring for the environment a more prevalent cause in the minds of all students.

Additionally, he is working to expand the audience of his personal blog, WorkingtoSave, in order to reach and educate more people about prevalent environmental issues and solutions, and will be planning and attending the annual Empowered Young Environmentalist’s Summit in the hopes of both educating and learning from his young peers in the environmental field.

Laneice McGee – F.E.M.A. (Future Entrepreneurs Moving Ahead)

Since 2016, Laneice McGee, creator of F.E.M.A. – Future Entrepreneurs Moving Ahead – has been working her passion of helping youth aged 13-18 years realize their dreams of starting a business. Through her project Future Entrepreneurs Moving Ahead, Laneice guides youth in exploring entrepreneurship options, learning valuable skills in marketing, sales, presentation and creative thinking that they can use in future businesses or professional endeavors.

James Nyamahono And Kelvin Pikirai – East London Mini-Habitable Planet Workshop (Mini-HPW)

The biggest challenges facing South Africa today are those of poverty, systematic racial inequality (a persistent legacy of apartheid), and climate change. Science education offers a solution to all these problems, however, too few black South Africans are capacitated to participate in science careers. Our project has the primary goal of inspiring school pupils to acquire a lifelong fascination with the physical world, that will lead to successful careers in science and research.

We run programmes in schools that make the sciences explaining climate change fun, relevant and accessible. Furthermore, these build academic development, confidence, and leadership skills.

Trained undergraduate peer educators work with pupils from disadvantaged schools. These peer educators start science clubs, which involve pupils in various activities such as creatively monitoring their local seasons. Secondly, a week long holiday programme of lectures and field trips will introduce them to Earth systems science.
Given the disadvantaged circumstances, achieving our goals requires transport for pupils, which requires additional funding. The grant from The Pollination Project will help maximize our project’s impact.

Breona Larmore – Her Sins Are Forgiven

Her Sins Are Forgiven is a God given vision that was placed on my heart in 2016. I have always had a passion for the criminal justice system but decided that I wanted to provide rehabilitation services instead of being an enforcer. The women’s state prison population has grown 834% since 1978, and more than half of these women return to prison within the first 3 years after release.
There are less than 7 programs such as mine in Maryland and only one other in my district. Her Sins Are Forgiven’s focus is recidivism and our goal is successful reentry for women returning to society after incarceration. We serve our clients by providing resources that we feel are necessary to create an ideal quality of life outside of prison walls. Some of the resources we provide include case management, crisis counseling, job readiness, one on one and peer support, GED tutoring, and much more!

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