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That is the sixth installment in a weblog sequence that includes the ten recipients of our 2023 Muck Boot Chapter Capability Grant program. By way of this 12 months’s grant program, the chapters acquired fundraising coaching and help to assist them construct long-term monetary sustainability.
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In 2022 and in 2023, the West Michigan Younger Farmers Chapter acquired the Chapter Capability Grant to help the launch of their West Michigan BIPOC Farmer Land Fund to help Black, Indigenous, and different farmers of coloration with securing entry to land and infrastructure. In the Grand Rapids space, discovering out there and inexpensive land to farm, particularly in city areas, is tough and costly as land costs proceed to skyrocket. In gentle of the outcomes of the 2022 Census of Agriculture, launched by USDA earlier this month, that present that the variety of farmers of coloration, notably Black and Indigenous farmers, has decreased, resourcing BIPOC farmers to allow them to entry land is extra essential than ever.
In February 2024 the chapter made their aim after two years of fundraising! The chapter anticipates making their first awards to farmers this 12 months. You possibly can donate to the fund right here.
With final 12 months’s grant, the chapter created a brand, constructed an internet site, and paid artists to assist them develop graphics for his or her social media and different communications. This 12 months, their aim for the grant program is to determine how you can financially useful resource their fund within the long-term. By way of the event help they acquired by the grant program, the chapter was skilled on how you can prospect and acquired instruments like a pitch deck template and letter of curiosity template to assist in fundraising.
The chapter has not too long ago included one other native meals justice undertaking, Energy to the Folks 616, a grassroots, girls of color-led collective that runs a freedom college camp for BIPOC kids in the summertime. A spotlight of freedom college is introducing BIPOC kids to agriculture as a viable profession who wouldn’t be uncovered to it in any other case. By way of the Chapter Capability Grant program, the chapter was in a position to establish two grants to use for to help the chapter’s work in West Michigan.
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Chapters of the Nationwide Younger Farmers Coalition are the aim for and companions in our mission to shift energy and alter coverage to equitably useful resource our new technology of working farmers. Try our web site to see present Chapters in your space and e mail us at [email protected] to debate beginning a Chapter.
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