Six Northern Rivers not-for-profits will soon be sharing in $100,000 of funding from local independent brewery Stone & Wood’s not-for-profit arm, the inGrained Foundation.
Now in its second year, the Northern Rivers Large Grants Program 2020 invited Northern Rivers social and environmental not-for-profits with DGR status to apply for a grant between $10,000 and $30,000 and to show how their projects contribute to ‘regeneration and social connection’ – this year’s theme.
The winners are Rainforest 4 Foundation, Mullum District Neighbourhood Centre, Tweed Landcare, Support for New Mums, Zero Emissions Byron (ZEB) and Autism Camp Australia.
Rainforest 4 Foundation say they will embark on a large scale regeneration project across fire-impacted Huonbrook, Wanganui and Upper Wilsons Creek with their $30,000 grant. The organisation says it will engage residents, landowners, volunteers and the Aboriginal Madhima Gulga bush regeneration team in mitigating the risk of future bushfire through weeding, planting and increasing biodiversity.
With their $20,000, the Mullum District Neighbourhood Centre say they will launch a nutritional food relief and food sustainability project for community members experiencing financial difficulty and/or social isolation, in which participants can connect and engage in food preparation together.
Tweed Landcare say they will put their grant toward wildlife regeneration in the fire-affected area of Terragon in the Tweed Valley, ‘which engages local residents and landowners in improving safety for local wildlife and installing waterers, nest boxes, hollows and sensor cameras for animal tracking’.
Zero Emissions Byron (ZEB) say they will use their grant to part-fund their RePlant Byron Community Connection Project, which aims to drawdown carbon and reinvigorate local biodiversity by, with help from local Aboriginal firestick burning practitioners, preparing degraded pastureland for the planting of 3,500 locally grown native rainforest trees, which will be planted across two community planting days.
inGrained Foundation director James Perrin said, ‘We couldn’t be happier with this year’s grants program’.
‘We received applications from 55 awesome not-for-profits in our region, which certainly made selecting the recipients more challenging, but also affirmed the amazing work they’re doing for our community and environment’.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
