Diversity Grants

The National Conservation Foundation (NCF) and the USDA Forest Service (FS), share a mutual goal of encouraging students to expand their knowledge and explore the environment and natural resource conservation through participation in Envirothon and its five areas of study: Aquatic Ecology, Forestry, Soils and Land Use, Wildlife, and Current Environmental Issues. Recognizing that historically underserved communities and students often face significant barriers to participation, NCF and the FS collaborate to offer the Diversity Enhancement and Underserved Audience Grant program (Diversity Grants) to provide additional support and financial resources to recipients with the goals of:

• Increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion within local state and provincial Envirothon programs
• Improving access to hands-on, outdoor natural resource education opportunities
• Encouraging education exploration
• Educating young adults on the importance of conservation

Examples of projects include, but are not limited to:

• Participation Projects to assist with travel and registration costs for teams who have been prohibited from participating in Envirothon events in the past due to lack of funding.
• Outreach and engagement projects that encourage and facilitate participation of historically underserved communities and students in the Envirothon
• Cultural inclusion projects incorporating underrepresented culture(s) into state/provincial Envirothon competitions and/or programs (in the form of ceremonies, histories, oral traditions, indigenous systems of science, traditional ecological knowledge, etc.) or translation of education materials into languages other than English
• Projects that improve environmental literacy and provide students access to hands-on learning experiences
• Accessibility projects that seek to adapt training and/or testing access to accommodate hearing, visually, or mobility-impaired students.