Ford opens call for 21st edition of Environmental Grants program
To continue promoting sustainability and accelerating the conservation of natural resources by empowering communities towards a more sustainable future, Ford Puerto Rico is announcing the open call for the 21st edition of its Ford Environmental Grants annual program.
The open call period will run through July 8, 2022.
The program — which has contributed more than $1.8 million to environmental projects in Central America and the Caribbean during the past two decades — will distribute this year $40,000 among the winning community initiatives that have a positive impact on the environment in Puerto Rico and explicitly contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals identified by the UN to improve the lives of everyone in the world.
Likewise, the community environmental projects submitted for evaluation must already be in the execution stage in Puerto Rico and have relevant preliminary results.
The 2022 Ford Environmental Grants will receive proposals in the following four categories: Conservation and Recovery of Biodiversity — Projects related to the protection, recovery and conservation of ecosystems, their flora and fauna and water resources; Food Security — Ecological agriculture projects and those related to the sustainable management of ecosystems that are strategic for the availability, access, and consumption of healthy foods in vulnerable communities; Waste Management — Projects that help reduce, reuse, recycle and recover waste generated in the communities and generate a civic culture of proper waste management; and Renewable Energies — Projects that promote the use of energy sources based on renewable natural resources (sun, wind, water, plant, or animal biomass) as a way to contribute to the fight against climate change.
Those interested in participating can access the DonativosAmbientalesFord.com page to register and learn more about the program, including the terms and conditions. In addition, an induction webinar will be offered June 17, at 11 am, when Environmental Consultant, Dacil Acevedo, sustainability and strategy partner at SINERGIA507, will go over the registration process and clear up doubts for the participants.
The experts in the environmental area who will select the winners based on their contribution to sustainable development, community impact, multisector alliances and multiplier effect are: Jorge Bauzá-Ortega, scientific director of the San Juan Bay Estuary Program; Yogani Govender, dean of Science and Technology of the Laboratory of Climate and Ecological Studies of the InterAmerican University of Puerto Rico; Glorimar Toledo, coordinator of Conservation/Biodiversity Projects of the Para la Naturaleza organization; Perla Sofía Curbelo, founder and director of Agrochic; and Luis Torres, co-founder of Engine-4.
“Through Ford Environmental Grants we promote the multiplication of collective efforts that serve as catalysts for change to achieve a better planet, so we are pleased to continue this initiative that we started in 2001 and have celebrated uninterruptedly since then” said Vivian T. Dávila, public affairs and communications manager for Ford in Central America and the Caribbean.
The impact of the winning projects of recent editions of the Ford Environmental Grants program is summarized in construction and rehabilitation of community infrastructure; support for the local economy; new technologies in production processes; capacity strengthening; greater integration and organization of the community and generation of new knowledge. In most cases, these projects leveraged their resources and scaled their impact through public-private partnerships with support from other nonprofits, businesses, and the government primarily.
