The Healthy Babies Initiative, a partnership of Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF) and the Mayors Innovation Project (MIP), builds on HBBF’s experience with 30 U.S. cities working to protect babies’ health.
Donor Name: Healthy Babies
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 05/20/2022
Size of the Grant: $20,000
Details:
Through this experience, they’ve identified five evidence-based strategies that cities can use to equitably reduce neurotoxic exposures with resilience co-benefits.
They invite concise proposals from US cities to apply for a $20,000 grant for projects that aim to replicate, in a tailored fashion, one of the five projects defined below. Each project must equitably reduce air pollution, lead, or other neurotoxic exposures that harm children’s brain development, have resilience co-benefits, and leverage bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL) funds when possible.
Four selected cities will receive:
- $20,000 grant, with minimal reporting requirements
- Light touch technical assistance from MIP and HBBF
- Opportunities to present their work through their two national networks
- Written blogs and case studies featuring their work
- Connections to peer cities that have led these initiatives
To Be Considered
- Proposals (max 3 pages) must be city-lead and include a:
- Short description of your city’s challenge to children’s health, including exposures like lead, air pollution, and others that harm brain development. Include any relevant social, environmental, or economic background that will help us understand more details about your community
- Reference to alliance with city values, initiatives, and/or plans (for example, strategic plans, comprehensive plans, sustainability plans, racial equity plans, etc.)
- Project goals, including short (12 month) and long term goals
- Anticipated project impact
- Project timeline, including any key milestones
- Project budget and justification, including any matching funding
5 Types of Eligible Projects
- Healthier Public Housing and Spaces: Examples include toxic free childcare training and nap mat exchanges, transition to chemical-free turf maintenance; and reducing lead exposures through education and/or remediation projects
- Cleaner Air: Examples include planting of trees and/or vegetative barriers near busy streets to reduce pollutants, transitioning park management strategies to chemical-free methods, and other green infrastructure projects.
- Lead Mitigation (wrap around LSLR and/or energy efficiency + lead abatement): The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that there are between 9.7 to 12.8 million water pipes that are or are suspected of being lead in cities spread across all 50 states. The BIL contains a historic $15 billion in dedicated funding for LSL identification and replacement. Parents and caregivers, including early childhood care and education providers, are critical to ensuring the health and safety of young children, but not all parents and caregivers are aware of the sources of lead exposure and how it can negatively impact children’s development
- Increased—mostly organic—Food Access: Examples: using municipal land for organic produce cultivation, increasing availability of local/organic produce; working collaboratively with residents in low access food areas to develop solutions to that lack of healthy food access
- Environmentally Preferable Purchasing: Examples include environmentally preferable purchasing policies that require products purchased are sustainable and free of neurotoxic chemicals.
For more information, visit Healthy Babies.
