Annual grants helping Yarra community take climate action

Through our Annual Grants we support community groups and organisations to act on the climate crisis and help create a sustainable Yarra. This year we’re thrilled to be funding more climate action projects than ever before. We’ve invested in 20 projects that help create a circular economy, reduce emissions, grow local food and much more.

At a quick glance, this year we are supporting:

• The Australian Environmental Films Association to create short films that will ‘pop your consumption bubble’ and feature local people taking climate action
• The Australian Vietnamese Women’s Association to educate Vietnamese Australians about ways to reduce carbon footprints through changes to energy, food and more
• CLIMARTE‘s Climate Emergency Gallery to creatively engage people through exhibitions and public forums about climate emergency issues and the socially just solutions we need.
• Awareaway delivering creative, hands-on workshops for children exploring plastic pollution issues through art and growing their own art materials
• Circular Economy Victoria to engage local people in a 30-day Circular Living Challenge – a fun, digital challenge fostering new sustainable behaviours
• Cirque du Soil, a community composting collective, to provide circular economy solutions to local businesses for food and plastic waste
• Collingwood College to set up recycling hubs, run waste education sessions in multiple languages and audit, track and systematically improve their waste practices
• Collingwood Children’s Farm to host producer-led workshops on regenerative food growing practices and the climate related impacts of food
• Cultivating Community to work with the Cromwell Street community to ‘green-up Cromwell’ through planting spaces and workshops on food growing and sustainable practices. Cultivating Community will also set up a large scale worm farm to recycle food and organics in North Richmond
• FareShare to establish a large new garden bed at their Abbotsford Kitchen Garden to attract beneficial insects and increase biodiverse Indigenous plantings
• Fitzroy Primary School to create native microbat habitat, building and monitoring boxes for students to gain an understanding of the need for hollows for fauna in urban areas
• Green Music Australia to run a tailored 13-week Green Action Program for local music businesses, including a focus on the climate crisis, First Nations knowledge and making change in their businesses, from strategy through to measuring impact
• Holden Street Neighbourhood House, who partner with SecondBite, to install a new community food pantry and wicking garden bed, and to provide food growing education
• Mark Street residents to install and promote veggie planter boxes at Mark Street Hall for local food growing and harvesting
• Northern Inner Multiple Birth Association to set up a free cloth nappy library, enabling parents with multiple babies to access zero waste nappy options in place of disposables
• Rethink Recycling Co-op to create more community collection points for plastic lids and carry out interactive demonstrations to turn plastic waste into new products
• Rushall Community Garden in North Fitzroy to install four new wicking beds to share free fresh food with the community
• The Yarra Riverkeeper Association to engage residents to create Indigenous plant habitat in private spaces of all sizes, along with citizen science to monitor and understand the benefits of biodiverse environments

Would you like to get a great climate action project in Yarra off the ground quickly? Groups and organisations can apply for up to $1,000 throughout the year through our Small Project Grants for climate action.