The County of Hennepin, State of Minnesota is soliciting proposals for Green Partners Youth Environmental Leadership grants for the Environment and Energy Department.
Donor Name: County of Hennepin
State: Minnesota
County: Hennepin County (MN)
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 05/01/2025
Size of the Grant: $10,000 to $100,000
Grant Duration: 2 Years
Details:
The Youth environmental leadership projects encourage environmental leadership and/or exposure to green jobs for young people in high school up to age 24. Project activities should encourage an environmental stewardship mindset that lasts beyond the program. Projects may provide opportunities for youth leadership in their school or community and exposure to green jobs or investigation into the green aspects of jobs they are interested in pursuing.
Focus Areas
Project focuses on the following topics:
- Exploring waste, reuse, and recycling
- Recycling
- Reducing, reusing, repairing
- Organic waste and composting
- Waste systems
- Exploring natural resources
- Exploring climate change
- Climate science
- Climate issues
- Increasing resiliency.
Funding Information
- If your organization has never received a Hennepin County Green Partners grant before, you can apply for up to $12,000 for a one-year grant
- If your organization has received a Hennepin County Green Partners grant before, you can apply for up to $25,000 for a one-year grant or up to $50,000 for a two-year grant. (Multi-year requests are not always granted. The grant review committee will determine if the full request will be awarded).
Grant Period
- One-year projects period: September 2025-August 31, 2026
- Two-year projects period: September 2025-August 31, 2027.
Project Activities
Project activities can incorporate:
- Youth-led environmental community service projects: Immerse students in their local environment, history, and culture by encouraging action and youth leadership in community initiatives. Explore natural areas and green infrastructure where youth live, learn about local green initiatives through volunteer efforts, and help youth develop community-based stewardship projects that benefit the environment
- Youth-led research to investigate an environmental challenge, develop a solution, and implement a project: Engage youth through outdoor field experiences to study environmental topics ranging from bats to zebra mussels. Engage youth in exploring environmental systems and identifying environmental consequences of human actions, and potential solutions that address root causes of environmental problems. Involve youth in collecting scientific data related to the environment for their project. Provide opportunities for youth to meet scientists to learn how community collected data contributes to environmental solutions and their green job pathway
- Youth-led collective action on local issues and civic engagement: Provide opportunities for youth to have outdoor environmental experiences, build relationships with other youth, and learn about a local environmental issue important to them. Help them take steps to address the issue individually and as a group. Facilitate learning about the challenges of addressing the environmental issue individually. Encourage youth to share their perspectives and stories in community and civic spaces, such as, presenting at a local government board meeting, creating a green team at school, or talking to school administration about environmental issues at school
- Youth-led community engagement on environmental topics: Identify and pursue solutions to environmental problems. Examine environmental issues, consider benefits and consequences of various actions, and create a youth-led community engagement plan to address an issue
- Youth-led campaign to introduce behavior change in their community: Create a youth-led campaign to engage others in preventing and reducing waste, or protecting water, trees, or wildlife using strategies that encourage behavior change
- Traditional ecological knowledge: Engage youth in learning about and applying traditional ecological knowledge to a current environmental issue, challenge, or opportunity in their community. Facilitate the development of a youth-led plan to share what they learned and engage others, perhaps younger children or community members, in applying what they learned.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for the Grant, the Applicant must be one of the following:
- A non-profit entity, such as a community, youth, or faith group, registered with the State of Minnesota Secretary of State
- A public school district or private school, including community education and early childhood family education programs
- A park district.
For more Information, visit County of Hennepin.
