In the fall of 2023, the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative awarded five community grants to non-profits and community organizations across the Northwest. These grants support justice-focused, environmental and climate projects that advance community-centered resilience priorities. Our five awardees are: 

Black Star Farmers 

Location: Seattle, Wash.

Black Star Farmers (BSF) is a coalition of people with diverse identities working towards the radical reclamation of land and food sovereignty for all beings. We achieve this through land stewardship, mutual aid, education, and direct action. Black Star Farmers reclaims Black and Indigenous relationships with the land, improving BIPOC communities’ food sovereignty, and guides difficult discussions about racial inequality.

This project will support regular public gatherings on the second and fourth Sunday of the month at Black Lives Memorial Garden in Cal Anderson Park and other gardens around Seattle. Activities include garden stewarding, community engagement, education, and mutual aid food distribution. These events bring communities together in gardens throughout Seattle to reflect on the importance of collective liberation, and how to imagine, make, and maintain local, sustainable, seed-to-seed gardens.

blackstarfarmers.org

United Territories Of Pacific Islanders Alliance – UTOPIA 

Location: Kent, Wash.

UTOPIA Washington is a queer and trans people of color-led, grassroots organization born out of the struggles, challenges, strength and resilience of the queer and trans Pacific Islander community in the South King County area. We are actively replacing systems of oppression with ecosystems of care and safety for all our communities through Black and Brown organizing, prioritizing land and bodily autonomy, and reclaiming our cultural narratives. We envision a world of abundance, autonomy and harmony, where all forms of supremacy cease to exist for all life.

Through our SPEAC Change program (Systems, Policies, Environmental, and Cultural Change), we are committed to the establishment and execution of a Climate Justice Cohort comprising of QTPI (Queer and Transgender Pacific Islanders) and 2SLBTQIA+. This initiative aims to cultivate community leadership, community-driven advocacy, and a deepened understanding of our current positioning and significance within the Climate and Environmental Justice movement. With this endeavor, participants will engage in structured training, forge meaningful relationships, allocate deliberate periods of collaboration, partake in community-based participatory research and leverage a diverse array of organizational tools. The overarching objective of the cohort program is to provide a solid foundation that empowers QTPI and 2SLGBTQI+ members to occupy the forefront of climate resilience and advocacy with unwavering confidence and unapologetic determination.

utopiawa.org

Oregon Rural Action 

Location: La Grande, Ore.

Oregon Rural Action is a grassroots and culturally diverse community-led organization in Eastern Oregon. Our mission is to promote social justice, agricultural and economic sustainability, and stewardship of the region’s land, air, and water. Through community organizing, public conversations, and policy advocacy, Oregon Rural Action is building a rural movement for the well-being of all people and our environment.

Our project aims to build water security and resiliency in the Lower Umatilla Basin by ensuring access to safe drinking water in the short term and building towards improved water supply solutions in the long term. Building on the partnership with the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative, we will engage and build new leaders, expand our geographic reach and build collective power and influence to access sources of clean drinking water permanently. The goal of this work is to help the community authentically contribute to decision-making on mitigating nitrate in groundwater and ensuring access to safe drinking water.

www.oregonrural.org

Greater Hells Canyon Council 

Location: Northeast Oregon, Southeast Washington, West Idaho

Greater Hells Canyon Council (GHCC) is a place-based conservation organization that serves Northeast Oregon, Southeast Washington and West Idaho. We work with many collaborators and allies to connect, protect, and restore the wild lands, waters, native species and habitats of the Greater Hells Canyon Region, ensuring a legacy of healthy ecosystems for generations. Greater Hells Canyon Council is also a founding member of the Tribally-convened Camas to Condors Partnership, which weaves the values, priorities and traditional stewardship practices of the Nez Perce Tribe into regional climate adaptation work.

With support from the community grant, we will support three areas of work with the Camas to Condors Partnership. First, the funding will resource traditional Nez Perce gatherers’ work on the Seasonal Round Trail, which establishes a living lab across the elevational gradient in Nimiipuu homelands to track climate impacts to culturally important species and places. Second, this funding will help maintain Greater Hells Canyon Council’s facilitative role in the Camas to Condors Partnership; third, it will support the broader Tribal community’s participation in two events: a camas pit bake on the Nez Perce Reservation in fall 2023 and a roots and/or berries gathering outing in Wallowa County, Oregon in spring or summer 2024.

hellscanyon.org

Upper Snake River Tribes Foundation 

Location: The Burns Paiute Tribe in Burns Oregon; the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe in McDermitt in Nevada and Oregon; the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes in Idaho; the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes in Owyhee Idaho and Oregon

The Upper Snake River Tribes (USRT) Foundation is an intertribal consortia comprised of four member tribes: the Burns Paiute Tribe, the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe, and the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe. The Upper Snake River Tribes Foundation works to ensure the protection, enhancement, and restoration of natural and cultural resources, activities, and rights of the tribes. The Foundation’s tribes experience disproportionate impacts from climate change while also being some of the most under-resourced tribes in the nation.

The Foundation will use community grant funding to continue to build and strengthen its Community and Youth Climate Education program through 2024. Building off of a Tribal Youth Climate Camp held in August 2022, this program will include a two-week summer camp and four climate field trips. The goals of this program are to 1) educate tribal youth on climate change and how it impacts their community, 2) encourage youth to pursue higher education in climate-related fields, and 3) empower tribal youth to engage with climate science within their communities. This program gives the tribal youth a sense of stability, making the camps and activities something they can look forward to every year.

uppersnakerivertribes.org

About the Community Grants Program 

The Community Grants Program is designed to support frontline communities and tribes or nonprofits and community organizations that serve frontline communities and tribes.

The Resilience Collaborative understands frontline communities as those who are disproportionately impacted by climate change. These are the populations who face historic and current inequities, often experience the earliest and most acute impacts of climate change, and have limited resources and/or capacity to adapt. These groups are often communities of color, Indigenous, low-income, or those whose lives and livelihoods depend on climate-sensitive natural resources.

The goals of the Community Grants Program are:

1. Support frontline-community initiatives and projects to advance community-based climate resilience.
2. Enhance the capacity of frontline communities and organizations in their climate resilience and adaptation work.
3. Establish connections, relationships, and mutual learning between the Resilience Collaborative and frontline communities.
4. Scale up local solutions and lessons learned to decision makers at a state, regional, or federal level or to other resourcing entities.
5. Scale local solutions out to similar communities facing similar challenges.