We estimate there are 19K kinship caregivers around Las Vegas, and most of these individuals don't know that there is peer support and resource direction available! Foster Kinship wants to build awareness and help these caregivers help the kids! $500 would go a LONG WAY to help keep home in the family, and the benefit would be more stability in the home for at-risk children! With the $ Foster Kinship could: 1. Create printed materials to distribute all over Las Vegas. 2. Support a month of advertising and press releases. 3. Pay for postage. 4. Fund the first few caregiver support groups of 2012- including water, snacks, printed resources and childcare for the kids, ensuring finding help and support is free for those who need and seek it!

With the passing of the seasons comes the yearly weathering of our bike trailers. Our homemade trailers have started to show signs of deterioration, and without them we cannot continue our mission in the Kirksville community. With $500, we can continue to provide this FREE pick-up service by purchasing new trailers and expanding our reach to more residents. With your help, we can continue to educate and engage our community, allowing individuals to actively participate in closing the broken nutrient-cycle in our local food system. This decreases physical waste, promotes cycling, and reduces the need for harmful chemical additives in our soil. As Gandhi once said, "For every revolution of the wheel spins peace, good will, and love."

The bus trip from the DC Metro area to Annapolis is expensive: it will cost over $2,000 for 100 young immigrants to attend the trip (currently, we only have funding for 40 to attend). $500 would help defray this cost and enable all 100 youth to participate and to learn, hands-on, how state government works.

The Terror staff is working hard to raise funds for our premier issue. If selected, Good's prize money would be put directly towards printing costs and promotional material.

The $500 grant would go toward purchasing a bulk amount of fluorescent bulbs at a discounted rate and advertising for the event with a large sign to be displayed at William Floyd High School.

Mitzvah Days is a brand new organization. It is an organizing force based on the idea of Earth Day and Food Day. Funds will be used to upgrade the website and run a challenge to give mini-grants to groups to organize their own mitzvah days. Winning this challenge will allow us to help and inspire others to give back to their communities. The future? We envision Mitzvah Days as having volunteers around the nation helping to organize mitzvah days and creating a network of resources to allow them to happen efficiently and easily. The idea of a mitzvah day will be well-known. Jews, and their friends of other faiths, will come together as a community to help their neighbors and friends, organizing many mitzvah days a year.

Our New York City event -- citizenship 2.0 -- will help update the definition of what citizen engagement is and inspire participants to connect and get involved. This gathering (held at a tavern with food and drink) will connect leaders from organizations leading change in the areas of volunteering, voting, activism, citizen journalism to interested, expert and curious members of the NYC community for learning and conversation. We will use the $500 to produce and promote the event, and to incentivize both attendance and post gathering activity. We will evaluate and report on our impact using a pre-post test and catalog and share our learning and experiences with those unable to attend. Join us as we redefine what a public house can be!

The first installation for our community garden will be a hoop house. A hoop house is a greenhouse with a plastic roof wrapped over flexible piping. The interior heats up because incoming solar radiation from the sun warms plants, soil, and other things inside the building faster than heat can escape the structure. Installing a hoop house will allow us to grown nutritious organic food year round that will help provide for the growing need of produce at our local food bank. The funds will help us purchase the supplies to build the hoop house. Labor, plants, and equipment will be provided by our staff and volunteers. This garden will be open for display at our organization display park.

Encouraging young people to focus on the good things already happening in their communities and the resources already available can transform the neighborhood in their minds. Students from H.D. Woodson will uncover and map these strengths by talking to residents, visiting non-profits, and participating in community meetings. After completing their map, students will create a high-impact service project that utilizes the neighborhood's strengths. They might work with a local non-profit to spread ideas about non-violence or they might start a regular community clean up - it's up to them. The $500 would provide students with ample resources to implement and support a sustainable and meaningful project that incorporates their fellow students.

Youth in Planning is a volunteer program of the American Planning Association, founded in 2010 by New York City APA Chapter. Our program partners offer generous donations of time, and resources that allow Youth Fellows to make real differences in their communities. Fellows learn about urban planning by working with professional planners who volunteer their time. Fellows create plans that influence the shape of the city in computer labs at local colleges. Their work also helps build their resumes and college applications. Our program costs little to maintain, and this grant would go far. We always seek funds for supplies, bus/subway fare, field trips, lunches, etc. This grant would help with a semester of programming in our upcoming year.

April 24 we'll hold our first Family Fun Night in conjunction with World Book Night. Interested families can sign up for our Family Reading Rewards Program. Participants will receive a Book Log to keep track of the books they read at home. By completing one Book Log (20 books) the family will earn tickets to our next Family Fun Night! For every additional Book Log they complete, the family will receive raffle tickets toward prizes that will be given away at the next Family Fun Night in June. This will continue all year long! We'll have new Family Fun Activities every 2-3 months! $500 will pay for the printing of the Book Logs, the promotional flyers, the small rental fee for the Family Fun Night venue and prizes!

We are a non-profit organization. We already have a financial partner in the city of Cedar Hill, and several merchants in the city have sponsored. We have a long way to go to reach our budget goal. The GOOD $500 will go towards printing our event program, which will contain a map of the historic downtown area and will show where and when all of the festival activities are happening. This event program is a crucial element to making this event a reality, since attendees won't know where to go without it!

In recent years, public libraries and schools have been devastated by budget cuts. SPREAD is a campaign for education, a reminder that education is a right and should be as easily accessible as a stroll down the street. SPREAD is also a response to our increasingly individualist and consumerist culture. The creation of communities that work together to share resources will be key in the effort to build a better future. Constructed primarily of biodegradable cardboard, SPREAD is designed to attach to fences and signposts. The temporary nature of the library keeps expenses low and allows the project to be installed more quickly and extensively throughout the city. Funds will be used to cover the costs of materials and transportation.

The construction and lot acquisition has largely originated from the adjacent elementary school and a local community group. The school and community are in a food desert. Work that has been done has been accomplished through in school student involvement, an after school environmental group and community volunteers. So far a design has been drafted and grants written for the raised bed portion. Money is still needed for tool acquisition, planting material, sheet mulching material, and more lumber/construction equipment. The lot will one day link the elementary school to the community, and as the students have said, "Give the community a place to grow good food, work together, help each other and meet new people."

The Action Group works parallel to an adult education program where a hyper-diverse 500 students receive free English classes. The group is currently creating a tiered leadership development and civic engagement training program consisting of monthly know your rights workshops, basic civics education and trainings that build on existing leadership skills. We see this tiered approach as a long-term investment in promoting justice, cohesion and “good citizenship” in our community. $500 would allow us to cover: (1) photocopies and printing of know your rights materials; (2) supplies to help make meetings and trainings more interactive and fun; (3) transportation to / from advocacy events and visits to New York’s City Hall and State Capital.

The funds will be used to provide marketing materials to local schools. Additionally, each participating school will be provided with a recycling bin to collect trash. The school with the greatest amount of items to be recycled will also be rewarded a small prize for their efforts-I'd like to reward the kids for sacrificing something they enjoy to help keep our communities clean!

The funds will be used to help fund the Walk. We want to provide an atmosphere where parents can take away inexpensive ideas to occupy their children. We also want to provide a fun experience for families and be introduce the topic of child abuse and its prevention. All the money we raise goes to the CACHC educational outreach program and by getting these funds we will be able to provide more activites and which will generate more money to donate.

The funds would help us spread the word. Printing fliers, making t-shirts, and going door to door to ask people in our neighborhood if they have produce that they don't use and would be willing to donate. We would start it all off with a big block party inviting all of the neighbors and local bloggers to cover the event. Then we would find a location to regularly sell the produce, at extremely low prices, and team up with local vendors to form a small farmer's market; giving everyone in the neighborhood access to fresh local produce. Any excess produce would be donated to a local food bank. The money made from the sale would support future community parties and events. "City Citrus, Feeding Our Friends."

We will collect oral histories from each WalkStop neighborhood to add a “depth of neighborhood” understanding for visitors and new residents of the location. We’ll use the money to help buy taping equipment and build out the project (press 2 for Hanks, 3 for Mr. Jones)... Examples of stories to be found by one: Hank’s 500: a former violence-ridden bar now an empty, ghost-ridden spot at the corner of Haight and Fillmore; Mr. Jones, the 87 year old African American who almost became a member of the Tuskegee Red Tails in WWII until they found out he was color blind; A woman who swept her 6 blocks of street for years each day in the 80s and 90s to "claim" her street back from drug dealers and users.

The Litter Merit Program will inspire residents and frequent visitors of the neighborhood to care more about their surroundings by rewarding them for cleaning up. With drop boxes in popular businesses and restaurants, as well as using social media, residents will keep track of what trash they threw away by logging each action by day. At the end of each month, all entries will be collected and whoever had the most entries will be rewarded with a gift card to support a local businesses as well as a certificate for being a good neighbor. The $500 will assist in purchasing trash bags, gloves, trash removers, printing marketing material and rewards for each participant.