Grants Awarded

Spring 2011
Project: Olympia Village Building Convergence
Group: Olympia Village Building Convergence
Amount: $500.00
Tags: Community Building, Sustainable Building
Description: The second Olympia Village Building Convergence combined workshops, speakers, and community-building events. The 3-day event focused on encouraging and supporting neighbors to form "villages" that identify themselves with a common gathering place, and on helping these village groups to build such places. "Projects might include, but are not limited to: the building of structures that facilitate gathering and dialogue such as community kiosks, benches, free-boxes and play areas; the creation of community gardens, compost systems or bioswales; the beautification of public spaces through painting, sculpture and public art."

Spring 2011
Project: West Olympia Farmers Market
Group: West Oly Market Steering Committee
Amount: $350.00
Tags: Local Agriculture, Economic Justice
Description: The group is creating a small, once-a-week farmer's market in West Olympia. This is a response to an observed community need for both a West-Oly market and a market that catered better to smaller growers and crafts-people who were unable to participate in the larger farmer's market downtown. The goal of the steering committee is to make the marketing opportunity available to all producers of local goods, no matter how small.

Spring 2011
Project: Visualize the Estuary
Group: Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team
Amount: $650.00
Tags: Environment
Description: This project is using art and community charrettes to educate the public about what a restored estuary would look like and involve the community in re-designing downtown around a restored estuary. The goal is to combat the public conception that eliminating Capitol Lake would result in a smelly eye-sore, and to educate about the ecological values of an estuary.

Spring 2011
Project: Madison School Garden Farmstand
Group: Madison-Avanti Giving Garden
Amount: $500.00
Tags: Agriculture, Economic Justice
Description: This grant funded the expansion of the Farmstand project at Madison Elementary. The school's garden serves as a classroom for students to learn about food issues. The Farmstand brings those lessons home by providing produce for students to "buy" with coupons earned at school. It also provides healthy fresh fruits and veggies to low-income kids who may not have other access to those food choices.

Spring 2011
Project: Community Food Summit
Group: Sustainable South Sound
Amount: $800.00
Tags: Agriculture, Economic Justice
Description: This two-day event included speakers, workshops, and a potluck in the streets of downtown. The goal was "to create a concrete action plan to move the community towards a more socially just, economically vibrant, and ecologically sustainable local food system." This main push of the event was to unite the many groups working on local sustainable agriculture and to raise public awareness of local food issues.

Fall 2010
Project: Stonewall Youth Speaker's Bureau
Group: Stonewall Youth
Amount: $1,000
Tags: Social Justice, Gender/Sexual Identity Equality, Youth Issues
Description: In their on-going mission to combat homophobia and hate crimes in teens and young adults, Stonewall Youth is presenting panels of youth at high schools and middle schools in Thurston County. The presenters, who have been trained in speaking and leadership, share their coming out stories and the difficulties and prejudice they have faced. They also share stories of empowerment. The program is transitioning from adult-led to peer led. This grant helps to pay for training that youth leadership as well as supporting the cost of putting on the presentations.

Fall 2010
Project: Community Cafés
Group: Family Support Center
Amount: $800 (+$1,000 from Sound Charitable Foundation)
Tags: Social Justice, Community Building,
Description: These parent-led groups gather a few families at a time for 6-week discussion series on protecting children in poverty, leadership and activism, education and empowerment, cultural and community traditions and connections, parenting across different cultures, and other topics of interest to minority and poor families with children. (In addition to a CSF grant, this project received a grant from the Sound Charitable Foundation.)

Fall 2010
Project: Reducing Religious Bigotry High School Outreach Project
Group: Interfaith Works
Amount: $650
Tags: Religious Tolerance, Youth Issues
Description: With the on-going war in the mid-east we are seeing a rise in anti-Islamic hate-crimes, xenophobia, and bigotry. Much of this is occurring in schools, where Islamic children and youth face daily threats to safety and security. Interfaith Works is responding by offering workshops for ministers and teachers on religious tolerance and bullying, creating resource handbooks on the subject, and sponsoring teen-to-teen workshops and panels in area high schools.

Fall 2010
Project: EGYHOP fundraising garage sale
Group: Emma Goldman Youth and Homeless Outreach Project (EGYHOP)
Amount: $250
Tags: Social Justice, Homelessness, Youth Issues, Economic Justice
Description: This grant covers promotional materials for a garage sale to raise money for EGYHOP, and the cost of printing buttons that will be sold at a profit. Both of these leverage CSF funds into a larger amount that will be used to buy much-needed supplies for local homeless youth. EGYHOP has been serving the homeless youth of Thurston County with direct one-on-one outreach for over 15 years.

Fall 2010
Project: Rebels By Bus
Group: Rebels By Bus
Amount: $300
Tags: Environment, Transportation
Description: Rebels By Bus targets mainstream car commuters with invitations to take "bus adventures." They publish complete directions for using public transit to take short excursions for fun, including weekends in Seattle and day-hikes on the Olympic Peninsula. By showing people that taking the bus can be safe, fun, and easy they hope to encourage increased use of public transit by people who would normally drive. The founders of Rebels By Bus are very active in writing news articles, giving public lectures, and networking with local organizations and local government agencies.

Spring 2010
Project: WIP 20-year Retrospective
Group: Works In Progress
Amount: $455
Tags: Community Building, Alternative Media
Description: Works In Progress, Thurston County's largest alternative news paper, celebrated their 20th year with an extra-thick edition containing excerpts of articles from the past 20 years. This narrated news time-line showed where we have been, what issues have been resolved or had progress made and which still plague us, and how Olympia has changed over the years. While Works In Progress normally supports themselves, the cost of this extra edition was more than the organization could afford alone.

Spring 2010
Project: Doula-Teen Partnership
Group: Doula-Teen Partnership Program (Sponsored by Community Youth Services)
Amount: $200 (+ $1,000 from Sound Charitable Foundation)
Tags: Reproductive Issues, Social Justice, Youth Issues
Description: A group of doulas and midwives are doing outreach to pregnant teens to help improve prenatal care and infant and maternal health. At-risk pregnant youth are identified through local hospitals, Community Youth Services, and local midwifery and perinatal services. The aim of the program is to reduce the number of teen mothers who suffer pregnancy-related medical problems, have difficult births, or have underweight or sickly babies due to insufficient medical care during pregnancy. The demographics of pregnant teens skew towards those who come from families which are poor and minority, and often towards those who have experienced abuse, so the Partnership also addresses social and cultural issues. This grant is seed money for organizational development and support of the program while fiscal sponsorship and fund development are underway. The Partnership's first project is a series of 10 prenatal education classes for teens. (In addition to a CSF grant, this project received a grant from the Sound Charitable Foundation.)

Spring 2010
Project: Music Mentors
Group: WAMM (Washington State Music Mentors)
Amount: $550
Tags: Social Justice, Youth Issues, Violence Prevention, Cultural Awareness
Description: Youth are selected from local schools (with an emphasis on reservations and poorer districts) to attend a music residency where they learn all aspects of music production, from composition through recording. The program offers support to teens to discuss issues such as drug use, violence, and racial discrimination, and then to write songs for their peers around these difficult subjects. The teens who attend the music camp also attend state and national peer leadership conferences. Through the residency and conferences they are taught how to reach out to other high school students with support, then they participate in workshops around the state, bringing positive messages through peer-to-peer music.

Spring 2010
Project: Community Viewing
Group: Traditions Fair Trade Cafe
Amount: $600
Tags: Community Building, Community Resources
Description: Traditions Café is a hub for local progressive groups, offering meeting space, bulletin boards, and a place to hold fund raisers and events. Traditions has a TV for groups to use for video presentations. It is large, heavy, old, and on a top-heavy cart that is difficult to move. The video equipment is dated and cranky. They propose to replace this with a projection TV and a pull-down screen, which would make the equipment accessible to more people. They are asking for grant to cover half of the price of the new equipment. It will be purchased from Desco Audio and Video, a local company that has offered a discount as a donation.