Disaster Response Virgin Islands Project #31089

St. Croix Foundation CARE Fund

by St. Croix Foundation for Community Development

Project Report | Feb 10, 2020
Building Collective Capacity for the Long Term

By Lilli Cox | Senior Program Officer

Fully, Proudly Certified in Solar Installation!

Since September 2017 when Category 5 Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the Virgin Islands, our Community has faced challenges that require the collective investments of every sector (public, private and civic) to overcome. True to progressive place-based philanthropy, St. Croix Foundation for Community Development is nurturing sustainable resilience by utilizing data to inform our investments and cultivating cross-sector collaborations as the cornerstone of social impact. We are pleased to report that our work continues to gain traction.

As we usher in 2020, this report showcases major milestones met with the completion of the first phases of several of our comprehensive recovery initiatives. We are mindful of the many partnerships that make this possible. The Foundation has never been more prodigious than we are today, and this is in large part fueled by our philanthropy partners who have committed sustained support for our recovery and who believe as we do: that making strategic investments in communities affected by natural disasters can create scalable models that have the power to change lives. While this quarterly report is lengthy, we have a lot to report – work that reflects our collective efforts – and we hope you’ll enjoy reviewing the story you’ve helped to write!

Changing Lives, Building Capacity: Solar Workforce Initiative Graduates Students and Installs Solar on First Community Center
As St. Croix Foundation rolls up its sleeves for the long-term phase of our hurricane recovery efforts, two fundamental principles have governed our planning and programing- equity and sustainability. In 2018, when we first conceived our solar and workforce development initiative, those principles informed every facet of programming.

By November 2019, St. Croix Foundation was proud to report that, 9 young adults have graduated from a 6-month National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) course. Those students represent the first formal class of certified solar installers in the Territory. And, we couldn’t be more delighted to announce that two students have been hired by ProSolar Systems, a local solar engineering company. Another student received several job opportunities on the mainland, and we look forward to an exciting update from them soon. Overall, all of our students received a certification card that is nationally accepted in addition to a tool bag sponsored by the Foundation.

While building a skilled workforce around sustainable energy is undeniably critical to St. Croix’s social and economic health, the Foundation is equally excited about how this initiative will impact nonprofit community centers and the neighborhoods they serve. Community centers were selected based on their strategic location to isolated or underserved neighborhoods and their connection to established nonprofit organizations serving vulnerable populations and providing structured community-based programming. As part of our Solar Initiative, students are solarizing 4 community centers on St. Croix including the Caribbean Center for Boys & Girls in Frederiksted and Flamboyant Garden Seniors Independent Living Community Center. These centers will, in turn, become resiliency hubs for vulnerable communities, providing energy independence and greater operational capacity to serve residents.

In late November, our newly certified solar workforce began solarizing the Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls of the Virgin Islands (formerly the Boys and Girls Club), which is today enjoying energy independence and estimated utility savings of up to 40%. The center will, in turn, invest its utility savings into the expansion of services to the over 100 young people and families it serves every day.

Our cohort of solar students isn’t done yet though! As part of the initiative, they are also completing a soft skills workshop to help prepare them for the workforce and develop their skills in areas such as interview techniques, financial literacy, and employment policies. While they complete this portion of their training, the cohort will also begin their next install on Flamboyant Gardens’ Community Center in early March, allowing them to complete the last portion of their on-site workforce development hours.

To date, this initiative is made possible through funding support from the VI Department of Labor’s Workforce Investment Board, GlobalGiving, and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy among other generous local and national partners. For more information call 340.773.9898. Thanks to these generous Philanthropic Partners, SCF has secured the necessary funding to solarize 3 of the 4 community centers. We invite additional funders to please contact the Foundation to become partners on this high impact resiliency project.

AmeriCorps VISTA Volunteers are Building Capacity!
As you may know, after 400 staff hours of coordination and development of our application, the Foundation was awarded over $300,000 by the Corporation of National and Community Service to assign 15 AmeriCorps VISTA members to support eight St. Croix nonprofits (including the Foundation) for a full year. Established in 1964, AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) is a program that brings passion and perseverance where the need is greatest – and that’s equity in action. This delegation will represent the first VISTA team in the Territory in over 20 years.

For 2020, the St. Croix Foundation’s VISTA Team is off to a great start. We currently have four VISTAs in place supporting Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls of the VI, St. Croix Long Term Recovery Group, and Virgin Islands Good Food Coalition.

AmeriCorps VISTAs are providing technical assistance to build capacity for organizations in addition to raising community awareness of each organization's services and initiatives. Our first VISTA, assigned at the Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls (CCBG) since October, has already accomplished her first newsletter and updated the organization’s website, providing new development materials to CCBG. She also held a presentation for young people on the Peace Corps, sharing her experience in global civic work. A second VISTA has also recently joined St. Croix Long Term Recovery Group as our Volunteer Outreach Coordinator with the goal of developing and implementing a volunteer recruitment strategy in her time on St. Croix.

Through a grant from the Virgin Islands Office of Insular Affairs, the Foundation is also sponsoring all VISTA with professional development and is targeting nonprofit training, grant research, and social media techniques into a year-long strategy to ensure VISTAs receive a holistic experience while building capacity for nonprofits. In testimony to the collaborative spirit embedded in this project, St. Croix Landmarks Society has also offered professional development workshops on the rich cultural heritage of St. Croix.

St. Croix Foundation is excited to see the VISTA Team grow! Thanks to a generous grant from GlobalGiving's Cruzan Island Spirit Fund to help subsidize housing costs for our volunteers, we continue our quest to recruit 8 more members and invite on and off-island candidates to learn more by visiting the AmeriCorps portal.

As always, the overarching objective of our VISTA Project is to strengthen our nonprofits so that they may, in turn, better serve our Community (particularly children and families). By helping our nonprofits build capacity, some of our most vulnerable residents will be empowered to broaden their experiences and rise above the conditions of poverty. But, as with all of the Foundation’s work, our VISTA project has multiple benefits: improving awareness of St. Croix and nonprofits for volunteers as well as providing work opportunities for local residents.

First Farmers Receive Farm Tiendas, and Resilience Building Begins!
In 2017, just months after the storms, with lead funding from Coca-Cola followed by a grant from the Cruzan Island Spirit Fund at GlobalGiving, the Foundation developed an initiative that would assist local farmers in building for the future and anchor them as community hubs in times of disaster.

Launched in April 2019, through this grantmaking program, the Foundation is awarding durable, eco-friendly container farm stands, or “Farm-Tiendas,” to seven eligible farmers to help bring their businesses back on-line. Farm stands are made from steel containers that will be outfitted with solar panels, Wi-Fi, and potable water to allow farmers to stabilize and expand their businesses while also providing community hubs in the aftermath of future disasters.

In December 2019, seven grantees were awarded and received public recognition at the 4^th Annual Coconut Festival. Today, St. Croix Foundation is pleased to report that the original prototype and six additional units have been purchased, wrapped, shipped and customized for each farmer. One Farm Tienda has already been delivered to Sejah Farm; the remaining six will be delivered to individual farms by February 29, 2020. They are currently stored at a secure location at no cost to the project, thanks to a collaboration with another nonprofit partner, St. Croix Farmers in Action.

As part of establishing Farm Tiendas as neighborhood resilience hubs, seven 1000-gallon water buffalos have also been purchased and will be installed when the Farm Tienda is delivered. Additionally, each farmer will receive 4 solar panels, 1 inverter, 1 charge controller, and two 150-amp hour batteries with aluminum battery boxes. With their Farm Tiendas equipped with water and solar energy, farmers will have the capacity to power lights, a small fridge, and multiple charging stations for use by residents in times of need.

Engineering for Resilience
With an eye on sustainability of the Farm Tiendas, St. Croix Foundation has contracted a Farm Tienda Project Engineer responsible for evaluating site locations and working with each farmer to create an affordable, structurally sound installation plan that complies with local building permit regulations. All site inspections have been completed and installation plans will be finalized by the second week of February.

From the onset, St. Croix Foundation also determined that Wi-Fi was a critical component to helping improve communication in times of need. The project will cover over $850.00 of Wi-Fi service costs per farm. All Tiendas are scheduled to be completely installed and outfitted by March 31, 2020.

Farm Tiendas as Community Hubs
While St. Croix Foundation was unquestionably excited to launch this pilot with a single Farm Tienda, when the Cruzan Island Spirit Fund and GlobalGiving reached out with a grant opportunity to expand the initiative, it significantly improved our ability to gather data and assess the impact. Perhaps most importantly, this funding provides the Foundation the ability to create multiple, strategically placed small community resilience hubs that can serve as distribution points for food, water, medical supplies, etc.

Our Farmers and Community Partners
Our farmers are critical as small business engines and as food providers during times of prosperity and need. They are, to St. Croix Foundation, more than grantees. They are our community partners. Whether it’s sweet local honey, organically grown sunflowers, fresh fruits, and vegetables, or meat and eggs – these are the farmers who make a difference every day. Below is a list of farms that have been awarded Farm Tiendas:

Sejah Farm at Castle Burke, Frederiksted; Production: Livestock, Poultry and Egg, Fruits and Vegetables, Forage
GLG Farm in Community Gardens, Frederiksted; Production: Fruits and Vegetables, Honey
Mystical Farm in Mount Victory, Frederiksted; Production: Fruits and Vegetables, Forage
Jackson’s Farm at Estate Diamond Frederiksted; Production: Livestock, Fruits and Vegetables
Chez Sherron Farm in La Valle, Frederiksted; Production: Fruits and Vegetables
New Breed Farm on South Shore Christiansted; Production: Fruits and Vegetables
Ridge to Reef Farm in Mount Victory, Frederiksted; Production: Livestock, Fruits and Vegetables, Forage

Evaluation and Data Collection
Evaluation and data collection will begin in April 2020 and run through November 2020. The Cruzan Island Spirit Grant has allowed us to procure different containers for us to assess performance in a variety of circumstances. For each farm, St. Croix Foundation will be collecting metrics on several key components of the project including:

Structural integrity of the container in an island environment
Increase in business capacity/ expansion of services
Usage of water, electricity, and Wi-Fi
Community benefits
Disaster recovery usage and performance

As a first-of-its-kind concept, we are pleased with the design of the initiative as a relevant and economically critical resilience vehicle, but we are equally encouraged by our ability to explicitly embed an Equity Framework into the process for selecting the farms that received Farm Tiendas. The design of the prototype, wrapping, site inspections, and installation conversations have also been highly productive. As a place-based hybrid community foundation, however, we feel that one of the greatest testimonies to the success of this initiative thus far lays in the collaborations that have made this possible. From the public, the private, and the civic sector, this is a true collaboration that has allowed the initiative to move forward.

On behalf of St. Croix Foundation for Community Development’s Board and Staff and the community we serve, we wish to thank Coca-Cola One, Cruzan Rum, and GlobalGiving for sharing our vision of a sustainable, resilient St. Croix.

Thank you!
As a place-based community philanthropy, St. Croix Foundation is mindful that to achieve sustainable growth and real resilience, strategic investments must be directed at a consortium of nonprofit organizations that are providing stable social services and are filling critical service gaps that our government alone cannot. We firmly believe that the Territory’s Civic Sector represents a viable pathway to healthier social systems in the Virgin Islands and we could not be more appreciative that you share this understanding with us. The work here represents real collaboration and investment in assets that exist in our Community – and we continue to believe that it’s an approach and a model that can be used to strengthen communities just like ours.

Solar Graduates Install System on Community Center

Farm Tienda Grantee Receives Customized Container

Farm Tienda Grantees Serve as Community Hubs Too!

A VISTA Presents on the Work of the Peace Corps

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Nov 14, 2019
Empowering Youth for Sustainable Resilience!

By Lilli Cox | Senior Program Officer

St. Croix welcomes VISTA Volunteer, Sinead!

To achieve sustainable resilience in the aftermaths of Hurricanes Maria and Irma, St. Croix Foundation has chosen to focus on nonprofits, youth and workforce development, energy independence, and food security. Our strategy? Select two groups of beneficiaries – nonprofits and youth – that are best poised to carry initiatives forward, seek out and implement innovation, and stretch the boundaries of what resilience really looks like. By choosing to focus on these two segments of our community, we sought to set the groundwork for long term progress and we’re happy to report traction is being gained! But we’ve also chosen two programmatic priorities – energy independence and food security – which we believe to be trigger points we can leverage several times over for economic benefit as well as sustainable resilience.

We hope you enjoy reading about the work you’ve directly supported! These are not just single projects in time, but models that can be expanded and modified as needed. But even more than that, it’s a strategy that is community-based and therefore, sustainable and undeniably resilient. Without you, it just would not happen.

Students Prepare for NCCER Solar Certification!
In our last report, we announced the official launch of our Solar-Supported Community Center Project and Workforce Development Initiative. Addressing workforce development, energy independence, and nonprofit capacity building, this single initiative is closing in on some major milestones which we are happy to report on.

Today, our 9 students have completed 400 hours of curriculum and are on their way towards gaining their National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) certification in solar installation. After just under six months, upon successful completion of their exams in November, students will graduate, fully certified in NCCER Core Curriculum, Electrical Levels 1 & 2 and Solar PV Installation. Our newly certified solar workforce will then proceed with solarizing the Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls of the Virgin Islands (Formerly the Boys and Girls Club) in late November and the Flamboyant Gardens Seniors Independent Living Community Center in December.

The best news we’ve received to date is that we were approached by a solar system vendor who asked to meet with our students to inform them that he is prepared to hire 5 students immediately upon completion of the Project to work for his company.

Today, the Foundation is working to identify additional funding for the final two centers, which will also serve as resilience hubs.

The Solar Supported Community Center Project and Workforce Development Initiative is made possible through a partnership with the Virgin Islands Department of Labor, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, Global Giving and a number of other national and local corporations and philanthropic entities.

SCF Awards Youth a Grant for Transportable Solar Station Prototype
While our solar students close in on graduation this Thanksgiving, the Foundation was recently approached by Kieran, a 17-year-old student and Boy Scout on St. Croix who has invented a solar charging station.

As part of Kieran’s final and rigorous service project to graduate as an Eagle Scout, Kieran devised a solar station that can be mobilized throughout neighborhoods during times of crisis. The station can be used to charge phones, laptops, and any medical equipment such as insulin testers that are rechargeable. In recognition of his vision, the Foundation awarded Kieran a grant in the amount of $2,100 that will allow him to create a working prototype of the station for our community to use and possibly invest in. Kieran will also teach 2-3 youth from the Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls of the VI how to build them and create a manual/ video to ensure the sustainability of this exploratory project. In addition, Kieran has agreed to host one community meeting to inform community members about his invention.

The Foundation couldn’t be more pleased! While we are building capacity for resilience in times of trouble, we are also supporting young people like Kieran to help them realize their dreams and begin to build a future for themselves and their Community!

St. Croix Welcomes Our First AmeriCorps VISTA Volunteers!
Early this summer, St. Croix Foundation was awarded over $300,000 by the Corporation of National and Community Service to assign fifteen (15) AmeriCorps VISTA members to support eight St. Croix nonprofits. And while we are still recruiting volunteers and trying to identify affordable housing for VISTA (an unfortunate outcome of the Hurricanes), we are happy to introduce one of our first AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers. Meet Sinead (pictured in our report), a young volunteer who is just now getting settled with the Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls of the VI. Her scope of work will be to assist the Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls VI with website development, community outreach, and the creation of an alumni database.

The overarching objective of our VISTA Project is to strengthen our nonprofits so that they may, in turn, better serve our Community (particularly children and families). By helping our nonprofits build capacity, some of our most vulnerable residents will be empowered to broaden their experiences and rise above the conditions of poverty. But, as with all of the Foundation’s work, our VISTA project has multiple benefits: improving awareness of St. Croix and nonprofits for volunteers as well as providing work opportunities for local residents.

Farm Tiendas on the Way to 7 Farmers!
First, we wish to extend our deepest appreciation to our Community and Philanthropic Partners (like GlobalGiving), who have made our Farm Tienda Agricultural Small Business Grant possible! An exciting initiative that serves to improve food security on St. Croix by bringing farmers back online while also bolstering our economy through the support of small businesses, this is another initiative that serves to also strengthen neighborhoods by creating resilience hubs.

Since we last reported to you, we convened a diverse committee of community stakeholders to review applications and selected seven farmers to receive 8x16 steel container Farm Tiendas, complete with 1000 gallons of water, approximately 4 solar panels and Wi-Fi connectivity.

While the Foundation had originally budgeted for six Farm Tiendas, one of the Foundation’s Donors, who was on the review committee, decided to fund one more. The decision was made after we determined that one of St. Croix’s oldest farms had not made the cut score. In the end, all eligible farmers were awarded Tiendas!

To date, farmers have been notified verbally of their selection and are preparing to sign formal contracts that will outline their reporting requirements and expectation for how the Tienda will be incorporated into the community.

In addition to the prototype Tienda that we presented in April, 6 more containers have been ordered. Of those, two containers have already been wrapped and prepared for delivery to the farm site, and we anticipate that the final wrappings will be completed by Thanksgiving. We are very excited to report that all Farm Tiendas will officially be delivered to our farmers during the second week of December. Once the Tiendas are delivered, solar systems will be installed on-site.

The Farm Tienda Small Business Grant Program is made possible through a partnership with Coca Cola, Global Giving, and ProTouch Communications.

Thank you!
As St. Croix Foundation nears major milestones with the completion of the first phases of several of our most comprehensive recovery initiatives, we are mindful of the many partnerships that make this possible. The Foundation has never been more prodigious than we are today, and this is in large part fueled by our philanthropy partners who have committed sustained support for our recovery and who believe as we do: that making strategic investments in communities affected by natural disasters scalable models can be built and the lives of people can be transformed. As we near November 15 and National Philanthropy Day, it should be noted that all we do is ultimately driven by our unabashed Love for Humankind. And we thank you for sharing that love.

Our solar students are just weeks from graduation!

Solar Charging Station Prototype for Neighborhoods

7 farmers have Farm Tiendas on the way!

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Aug 16, 2019
Sustainable Impact through Holistic Recovery Initiatives

By Lilli Cox | Program Officer

Our first solar NCCER cohort is in training!

As we write this report, we are mindful that next month will mark two years since Hurricanes Maria and Irma stormed the Virgin Islands in 2017. Today, as our community continues to recover, St. Croix Foundation is focused on work that supports long-term sustainability and resilience. As in so many other communities, on St. Croix sustainability and resiliency are not just words but imperatives. At the Foundation, we are acutely aware that as an isolated island community, St. Croix must look beyond theory and put into practice community-based initiatives that will drive our priorities of energy independence, economic resiliency, nonprofit stability, workforce development, and overall community self-sufficiency.

Today we are so pleased to announce that the projects we’ve been developing and updating you on, in conjunction with partners in the public, private, and civic sectors, are actively at work! And, because it wouldn’t be possible without you, we wish to extend our deepest appreciation to GlobalGiving and our family of supporters for making our vision a reality.

The Synergy of Workforce Development, Energy Independence, and Community
In June, St. Croix Foundation announced the official launch of our Solar-Supported Community Center Project and Workforce Development Initiative. A perfect representation of how the Foundation is advancing its recovery agenda and its commitment to holistic community development, this initiative was conceptualized to serve as a replicable model through which local youth are trained in order to build a skilled local workforce of solar installers; in turn, they will receive hands-on internship opportunities by solarizing several carefully selected community centers on St. Croix. Funded in partnership with the Virgin Islands Department of Labor, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, Global Giving and a number of other national philanthropic entities, the community centers that will be solarized include The Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls VI, Flambouyant Gardens- senior citizens community, Mon Bijou New Youth Community Center, and USVI Soccer Association Center.

We are now fully in the first phase of the initiative, with 10 students aged 18-28 who are currently enrolled in the 5-month National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) course. Our students are receiving intense classroom instruction in NCCER Core Curriculum, Electrical Levels 1-4, and Solar PV Installation. They also receive a stipend during the program in addition to uniforms and toolkits which they will be allowed to keep upon completion of the program.

Once students have completed the classroom component of the program and have successfully passed each level of coursework, they will receive on-the-job training installing Solar Photovoltaic Systems on our four identified local community centers.

While building a skilled workforce around sustainable energy is undeniably critical to St. Croix’s social and economic health, we are equally excited about how this initiative will impact nonprofit community centers and the neighborhoods they serve. Community centers were selected based on their strategic location to isolated or underserved neighborhoods and their connection to established nonprofit organizations serving vulnerable populations and providing structured community-based programming. Centers will ultimately serve as neighborhood hubs for individuals and families in walking proximity that will support them with critical needs in the aftermath of future natural (or manmade) disasters. Independent of the grid, these centers will enable residents to store medication that requires refrigeration, charge electronic devices, and use internet connection to communicate with family. Community centers can also serve as localized distribution sites from which aid and relief items can be stored and disseminated in the future. Equally important, this initiative seeks to nurture a culture of resilience by empowering each nonprofit community center to achieve a reduction in utility costs, the savings from which can be reinvested in direct services that benefit the communities and vulnerable populations they serve.

Our first center, the Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls has already pledged to begin November 4, 2019. And, thanks to our incredible network at GlobalGiving, the Foundation has secured funding to solarize our second community center, the Mon Bijou New Youth Community Center. The Foundation hopes to secure funding for two additional community centers, one of which serves the elderly and another that is located in a remote neighborhood with very little access to services in times of trouble. Each community center will be collecting data on usage, savings, and programming impact and the Foundation believes that this approach to sustainability and resiliency will become a model for recovering communities.

Hear from our students and Deanna James, President of St. Croix Foundation, on how this initiative is and will impact community:

https://www.facebook.com/News2vi/videos/1842826285820467/UzpfSTE1NjU4MTY2NDQxNTA2MzoyOTI2MTIzNzQwNzk0MTYx/

AmeriCorps VISTA comes to the Virgin Islands to Support 8 St. Croix Nonprofits
After a comprehensive and rigorous application process representing over 400 staff hours, St. Croix Foundation is happy to report that we’ve been awarded a $340,157 grant by the Corporation of National and Community Service to assign fifteen (15) AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers to support eight St. Croix nonprofits beginning in September 2019. We are very excited to welcome the first AmeriCorps VISTA Team in the territory in over 20 years.

In the aftermath of the 2017 Superstorms Irma and Maria, St. Croix Foundation conducted a survey on the status of nonprofits, who serve some of our most vulnerable residents, finding that 70% of nonprofits reported an increase in demand for their services while 64% were operating on a limited basis or not at all due to loss of funding, facility damages, and staff relocation. In response, St. Croix Foundation identified the AmeriCorps VISTA project as a strategy to build organizational capacity for nonprofits and began the comprehensive, year-long application process. With the application approved, a VISTA Volunteer Team will support the following organizations: Caribbean Center for Boys and Girls VI, St. Croix Landmarks Society, Virgin Islands Good Food Coalition, St. Croix Montessori, Clean Sweep Frederiksted, St. Croix Long Term Recovery Group, Virgin Islands State Historic Preservation Office and St. Croix Foundation. In total, St. Croix Foundation’s VISTA Project expects to directly benefit youth, historic preservation, food security, green spaces, and relief and recovery services.

St. Croix Foundation specifically identified participating organizations who represent each of our subsectors within our civil society, including youth & education, health & human services, the built & natural environment, and arts & culture. All sectors are also directly aligned with the priorities of the Foundation to ensure a holistic approach to capacity building among our nonprofits. As an added benefit, this initiative is also providing further opportunities for local residents by encouraging residents to apply to be part of the VISTA team, thereby learning about the critical role of our nonprofits.

Fiscal Sponsorship Opens Grant Opportunities For Recovery Groups
In every report, we like to update our partners on the work of the St. Croix Long Term Recovery Group (LTRG), who continues to steadily serve residents with unmet needs resulting from the 2017 Hurricanes. As the LTRG’s fiscal sponsor, the Foundation has been providing the LTRG with initial start-up support, waiving financial management fees and providing office space to the group so they can keep working while they build capacity.

In total, the LTRG has raised over $1,000,000 including a generous grant from GlobalGiving which will cover the cost of 6 new Disaster Case Managers (DCM) for the Territory. The DCM staff will work with the three Long Term Recovery Groups (STT, STX, STJ) to help address the needs of residents who were severely impacted by the 2017 storms but have no resources or recourse for recovery. As part of its response, the Federal Government was projected to award an $11 million grant to the Territory for Disaster Case Management almost two years ago; unfortunately, funds were failed to be released. As a result, our local nonprofits have been piecing funds together to hire staff to fill the gap. Beyond the DCM initiative, the STX-LTRG has, to date, completed major roof and hazard mitigation restoration on 52 hours.

Watch what our LTRG does every time a home is finished! https://www.facebook.com/stxltrg/videos/411558026377373/?q=LTRG

Our Appreciation...
Sometimes there are no words to adequately describe the appreciation we have for empowering St. Croix Foundation to serve, to lead, and to make these projects possible - projects whose ripple effects literally change lives. So instead, we'll just say thank you for being a part of philanthropy in the U.S. Virgin Islands!

Meet the children our first solar center serves!

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