SSDN Announces 2021 Community Collaboration Catalyst Micro Grant Award Winners

October 28, 2021

SSDN members believe that rooting sustainability work in equity is essential to seeing success in both solving the climate crisis and dismantling inequity. Our members are committed to addressing climate change by centering people and their experiences, and promote equal opportunity in the benefits from climate action. 

With support from The Kresge Foundation, SSDN launched its new Community Collaboration Catalyst Micro Grant Program in 2021, aimed at providing small pots of funding to local governments to overcome barriers to systemic inequities alongside dedicated community partner organziations. These collaborative partnerships will work to innovatively approach community-led and equitable approaches to sustainability, while also building a stronger and more trusting relationship between residents and their local governments. The program supports community leadership in local government sustainability and/or resilience projects, and allows local government and frontline community partnerships to create new solutions for that will spur continued community collaboration.

The CCC Micro Grant Program seeks to support the following specific outcomes:

1) Best practices pertaining to centering equity in sustainability and resilience work are established, to catalyze more community-driven, climate engagement efforts region-wide;

2) Strengthened relationships between local governments and community members; 

3) Deeper community engagement efforts and power building with local governments and frontline communities; 

4) Community engagement efforts centered in the planning, policy, and program development efforts from local governments.

SSDN is proud to announce the 2021 winners of this inaugural round of the CCC Micro Grant program:

These grantee partnerships will be supporting equitable approaches to local government and community clean energy, resilience, adaptation, energy efficiency, and climate action plans, policies, and programs. Partners will work on developing leadership in the community around climate solutions, create new best practices for equitable community-engagement, youth and student engagement, and scaling their developed best practices to a broader expanse of local neighborhoods. Work will begin in late 2021 and will be completed by Spring 2022.

Congratulations to our awardees! We look forward to sharing their experiences and successes with our network.