EPA Environmental Justice Small Grants Program

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Environmental Justice has announced its Environmental Justice Small Grants Program, designed to provide funding for projects addressing local environmental and public health issues in affected communities. Under this program, two types of projects are funded:

• Activities designed to educate, empower and enable communities to understand the environmental and public health issues and ways to address these issues locally; and
•  Research activities that examine issues related to a community’s exposure to multiple environmental harms and risks

Eligible applicants include non-profit, community based organizations, including faith based organizations, and federally recognized tribal governments or tribal organizations.

An applicant must also demonstrate that it has worked directly with the affected community for which the grant is seeking to impact.

$1,000,00 is available for proposed activities and $200,000 is available for research. Applications are due on March 31, 2011.

Last year 200 applications were received and 78 projects were funded. As the program is very competitive, communities should examine past successful proposals, which can be found here.

For the full notice, please click here.