Greenworks: 2025 Launch Fund

Greetings all!

Wishing you a happy new year and thank you for your continuing support of our projects.  We have a number of groups who successfully finished the Greenworks teacher training curriculum late last year, which has made them eligible for funding generously donated by you over the course of 2023.  Those groups (and their associated projects) are:

• Beeworks (Brazil) - This project will focus on native (stingless!) bee education and monitoring, working closely with the Guapiruvu agroforestry community.  Teachers and students will be buying beehives and creating a public education program with the agroforestry community to not only teach about native bees but to begin building sustainable business models that can help feed native bee honey into the co-ops in which the community is already integrated for export of their other food products.  In addition, there will be some electronics projects integrated into the program to help monitor the beehives and their health.  Native bees are important pollinators in tropical environments, but their numbers have been greatly reduced due to destruction of native habitat and native plants on which they depend.  This project will help rebuild their populations, build teaching resources that we can then use with partners in Indonesia, and help build the community's self-sufficiency.

• Greenworks Ternate (Indonesia) - This project will focus on deploying the project design curriculum in a 1-2 week workshop to Khairun University students in March, who will then submit their environmental stewardship projects for review and funding.  We anticipate receiving project proposals in the green economy, potentially building on our previous composting project or articulating with our Brazilian bee projects.  We're looking forward to what the students have in mind!

• Carpathian Geotourism (Ukraine) - This project will work on helping build geotourism opportunities in the Carpathian region of Ukraine.  In addition to building digital teaching resources (which will utilize Agavi as it comes online), additional resources and projects will be developed by students and teachers working with community leaders to monitor and clean up waste in the community, particularly waste that negatively impacts the scenic rivers that run through the area and reflect negatively on communities trying to build geotourism opportunities.

• Incubator (US Virgin Islands) - This project will work on building off a fledging astronomy club that is working to integrate into the local arts and farmers' market communities to build up local skills and opportunities for science communication and integration of astronomy into other facets of the island economy.  We're looking forward to see what the students have in mind for environmentally sustainable and science-focused island tourism opportunities!

As we work to help our partners launch these projects, look for additional fundraising opportunities to help build up funds for these projects to continue in 2025.  This fund, meanwhile, will transition to a permanent Greenworks Launch Fund, and we'll be working to build up funds for Cohort 2, which we'll be training in late 2024 and, with your help, funding in early 2025 for more exciting environmental stewardship projects.

Again, thank you for all your donations in 2023, especially during our matching opportunities.  You've made all of these projects possible!

With gratitude,

Lev