Common Ground Collaborative Grants
Ruth Swetland Eppig
Common Ground Collaborative Grants were created by GCA to help clubs build long term relationships with diverse community groups to develop, improve and maintain public land and programs. For Example. To establish and maintain urban farm programs. Five grants of $10,000 will be awarded nationally each year with reports required every 6 months for 3 years.
Our committee proposes that we engage with Rid-All Green Partnership as volunteers for three years to assist with their new Cleveland Tree Nursery and then apply for the Common Ground Collaborative national grant next spring.
“Cleveland, once known as the “Forest City,” currently has a very low tree canopy of just 18%. Many neighborhoods throughout Cleveland, particularly those which were previously redlined through racist lending policies, have even fewer trees. However, grassroots efforts such as those at the Rid-All Green Partnership, a nearly 19-acre urban farm in the Kinsman neighborhood, are working to grow the greenspace and tree canopy in Cleveland neighborhoods where the need is greatest. This includes a tree-nursery partnership with the Western Reserve Land Conservancy which started during the summer of 2021,” according to the Rid-All website.
Rid-All Green Partnership’s founders turned an abandoned and illegal dumping ground in the Kinsman neighborhood into an urban farm and education center. In addition to building a food oasis in the Forgotten Triangle, the nonprofit also runs a five month training program focused on learning to manage a farming business and operates a successful business using aquaponics and hydroponics to raise and sell more that 70,000 tilapia annually. They sell their own proprietary compost, have a veterans’s program, and a community kitchen which we will visit at our November meeting for a lecture and lunch.
Rid-All green partnership’s mission is to transform communities through food and employment. For those who are willing and would like to volunteer several times over the summer, we will send out dates. Come prepared to water, weed and help in any other capacity that is arranged. There is ample safe parking. Please go to their website at ridall.org.