The Berks County Community Foundation\u2019s Innovation Fund has awarded nearly $102,000 to projects that will improve environmental health.<\/p>\n
The projects include small-scale construction, such as community gardens, educational programs and large-scale planning efforts.<\/p>\n
The amounts and the recipients:<\/p>\n
\u2022 $8,000 to Berks Agricultural Resource Network for the 2026 Urban Agriculture Bus Tour.<\/p>\n
\u2022 $8,000 to the Berks County Earth Day Committee of Berks Recycling Coalition for the annual Berks Earth Day event.<\/p>\n
\u2022 $9,050 to Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club and Wildness Park for a forest stewardship plan.<\/p>\n
\u2022 $10,000 to GoggleWorks Center for the Arts for GoggleWorks Gardens at Laurel Park.<\/p>\n
\u2022 $10,000 to Widoktadwen Center for Native Knowledge for Adventure Summer Camp, making camp possible for 25 children who might not otherwise be able to attend. The seven-week, inclusive, nature-based program centers on the Seven Grandfather Teachings of Anishinaabe tradition: love, respect, bravery, humility, wisdom, honesty and truth.<\/p>\n
\u2022 $13,046 to Berks Nature for Cultivating Community: A Garden Initiative.<\/p>\n
\u2022 $13,860 to Berks Nature for a municipal outreach initiative supporting open space protection, native plant communities and stormwater best management practices.<\/p>\n
\u2022 $15,000 to Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful for a Spanish-language environmental outreach campaign.<\/p>\n
\u2022 $15,000 to Student Conservation Association for the 2027 Reading Conservation Corps, which will recruit, hire and train young adults to complete conservation projects across the county while gaining job skills and certifications.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Innovation Fund supports creative projects that can make a meaningful impact,\u201d said Emily Smedley, the foundation\u2019s environment and energy program officer. \u201cEnvironmental health affects everyone. We all have a role to play and can become responsible stewards of our beautiful, biodiverse region.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Berks County Community Foundation\u2019s Innovation Fund has awarded nearly $102,000 to projects that will improve environmental health.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,1131,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-211507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-environment","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}