All News Releases By Date

Connecticut Organization Selected for EPA Environmental Education Grant

Release Date: 10/05/2011
Contact Information: Paula Ballentine, 617-918-1027

(Boston, Mass. – October 5, 2011) A Litchfield, Conn. program that aims to integrate environmental studies into classrooms has recently been awarded a $28,977 environmental education grant by EPA.

Education Connection was one of 74 organizations in New England to apply for funding and one of four to receive part of the $219,094 awarded.

The funding will be used to train 10 teachers from five middle schools in western Connecticut on ways to integrate the environment into their curricula. The teachers will each get 20 hours of training and informal instruction as needed through the project. The teachers, as well as 250 students, will receive a full day educational visit to nature centers as well as an outdoor experiential class for students on school grounds and a community education day at several partnering nature centers.

Teachers as well as students will learn about climate change and how air quality, water quality and chemical risk are integral to the effects of climate change.

EPA funds environmental education projects that focus on educating teachers, students, parents or the general public about human health problems. These issues range from pollution; improving teaching tools and techniques for educators through workshops; building state or local capability to develop and deliver environmental education or public outreach programs; or promoting environmental careers and stewardship among students through hands-on activities.
 
The program also encourages projects that educate members of a community through community-based organizations, or educates the general public through print, film, broadcast, or other media to be more environmentally aware and make environment friendly decisions in their day-to-day lives. This year’s New England grant winners are:
 

•  The Mount Desert Island Biological Lab in Salisbury Cove, Maine ($83,628), a two-year program to educate students and teachers in two inland Maine high schools about marine vegetative environments.
   
•  The Coalition for Buzzards Bay of New Bedford, Mass. ($67,629), which is working to educate elementary school children on water quality issues through a partnership between Bay In My Backyard, the YMCA Southcoast  and Wareham Public Schools.
   
•  The Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island ($38,860), whose ECO Youth Multimedia Community Educators offers afterschool programs to mostly underserved high school students on air quality, toxics and  households chemicals to reduce the risks of VOCs, particular emissions and other asthma triggers.

# # #