Audubon Center of the North Woods

Established in 1968, the Audubon Center of the North Woods (ACNW) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) residential environmental education center. For more than 30 years, the Center has educated over 150,000 K-12, college, graduate, family, Elderhostel, and community participants about the environment and our relationships to it. In the last four years, the Center has committed to an extensive program of renewable energy and is quickly becoming one of the state's leaders in this area.

A WedgeShare Grant would be used to bring our ECO-RV, which runs on used, filtered vegetable oil, to schools in the Metro area. With many schools facing serious budget cuts, we know many students are not able to visit Environmental Education Centers such as ours. The ECO-RV would bring environmental education, in the form of renewable energy education, to them. It would provide programs and examples of renewable energy that can be seen and touched.

The Campus Kitchens Project (Augsburg College)

The Campus Kitchen at Augsburg College firmly believes that community development and neighborhood empowerment must be rooted in healthy food options for everyone, regardless of income or class. For the past three growing seasons, CKAC has cultivated relationships with local farmers to provide fresh, organic produce in all meals to our clients and as raw product to the Brian Coyle Center's food shelf in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. This summer, we're coupling this incredible produce with an educational curriculum for Somali immigrant youth to teach them how to prepare meals with seasonal produce while emphasizing the health and community benefits of buying local. A WedgeShare grant would allow us to expand this educational curriculum to more of our client population, lay the groundwork for a community teaching garden and compost plot at Augsburg, and get more local produce to our neighbors who need it most.

Cornucopia Institute

The Cornucopia Institute is fighting to protect the integrity of organic food and farming. Based in Cornucopia, Wisconsin, we are uniting and mobilizing our family-farmer members with their consumer⁄urban allies, and cooperatives, to block the corporate and factory farm takeover of organics.

We are spotlighting corporations using questionable production shortcuts while lowering food quality—threatening the future of local organic farmers. Our national scorecard, rating organic dairy brands, separates factory farm (2,000-10,000 cows) and family farm brands, helping consumers and cooperatives support⁄reward ethical producers in the marketplace (www.cornucopia.org). A Wedge grant helps expand our investigations⁄ratings into poultry, eggs, soy, branded vegetables, and the growing flood of Chinese organic imports to uncover food marketers profiteering at the expense of organic integrity.

Cornucopia is building grassroots pressure in Washington and in the marketplace for enforcement of strict organic production standards. Help us win this struggle for the heart and soul of organics.

Farmer's Legal Action Group

For 20 years, Farmers' Legal Action Group (FLAG), a nonprofit law center in St. Paul, has helped family farmers succeed in their struggle to stay on the land.

We are representing an organic certifier in a landmark case challenging USDA's attempts to force the certifier to provide its "organic" label to a large egg operation—that has denied its chickens access to the outdoors—without providing the certifier any means to appeal USDA's decision. FLAG's work will ensure that decisions on organic standards are made by independent organic experts, not federal agencies with uncertain commitments to sustainable agriculture.

This issue is part of a wider problem of corporations cashing in on the reputation of organics while undermining the strict standards that consumers expect. With help from Wedge members, FLAG will defend the integrity of the organic label and the continued livelihoods of organic family farmers we all depend on.

Foundation For Minneapolis Parks

Planting heirloom tomatoes, purple string beans, lime basil and giant sunflowers; tasting new foods like purple kale, nasturtium flowers, and making fresh dill dip or ice cream with real mint leaves are all part of the garden experience for youth participants at JD Rivers Children's Garden in Theodore Wirth Park. Children also explore Wirth Park's natural areas—wading in the creek, catching insects, and tracking animals in the woods. More than 95% of participants are children of color and 90% live in North Minneapolis. All programs are free. A WedgeShare grant would help extend gardening programs into the spring, diversify garden produce by planting various berries and fruit trees, and fund field trips to local organic farms where children can see where food really comes from and experience farm life by feeding baby goats, harvesting produce, or tasting fresh milk and cheese. In 2007 we celebrate the Garden's 25th Anniversary!

Garden Store Cooperative

We are a new Flower and Garden Store Member-Owned Cooperative acquiring an operating business, Greenstone Nursery located at 36th Street and Bryant Avenue South, on October 1, 2006. We plan to provide standard, unusual, heirloom and native — vegetable, herb, and flower — seedlings to bedding plants. The cooperative would continue the flower arranging and bouquet cash & carry business year round and plans to expand by offering Christmas trees, a small farmers market, hydroponics grown vegetables and herbs, and a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) drop-off point. The cooperative would also include community programming centered around gardening.

Working with consultants, Antonio Rossell of Community Design Group and Angela Dawson of the Northside Food Project, the core committee and Founding Members are completing business, marketing, and member development plans.

We are requesting $10,000 in funding for the purchase of equipment and supplies.

Please visit our website at www.gardenstorecoop.org.

Girl Scouts Council of Greater Minneapolis

The Girl Scout Council of Greater Minneapolis (GSCGM) builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place. We respectfully request a grant to support Planet ME!, a new Girl Scout event designed to teach 140 Minneapolis-area girls in grades 1-6 fun and easy ways to help the health of the environment and themselves at the same time. GSCGM will partner with Midwest Food Connection to educate girls about buying local and organic foods; growing their own foods; planting trees and the benefits of houseplants; walking or biking as means of transportation; carrying and using a personal reusable water bottle; and reducing, reusing, and recycling. As part of the activities, girls will personalize their own water bottles and create snacks from foods purchased at the Wedge. Girls will identify how their health and the health of the planet are connected and ways of protecting both.

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre requests a $10,000 grant to support the creation and presentation of Invigorate the Common Well in 2007. This episodic production examines the science and mythology of water through a unique blend of puppetry, video, spoken word, and music.

Invigorate the Common Well is a groundbreaking performance series that will link plumbers and puppeteers, actors and activists, hydrologists and musicians, and engineers with video artistss to promote the communal responsibility for the stewardship of one of our most precious resources: WATER!

HOBT is a professional puppet and mask theater that is acclaimed for its artistic excellence, commitment to building community, and dedication to social justice. The company creates mainstage and trouing productions, public ceremonial works, and education activities.

Land Stewardship Project

Land Stewardship Project (LSP) organizes Minnesotans to make their voices heard and have an impact on the decisions that affect our food and agricultural system. Whether organizing in local communities and stopping specific factory farms, promoting sound public policy that supports family farms and the environment, or assisting new sustainable farmers, LSP's members set the direction and priorities for the organization.

The LSP's Sustainable Farms, Prosperous Communities Project helps beginning and established farmers get started using environmentally sound farming systems and organizes citizens to create proactive policy change to provide family farmers with the resources they need to raise healthy food.

LSP's mission is to foster an ethic of stewardship for farmland, to promote sustainable agriculture, and to develop sustainable communities. Founded in 1982, we are a membership organization based in Minnesota with about 30% of our membership living in the metro area and 70% in rural communities.

Local Fair Trade Network

In the effort to strengthen local economies, promote sustainable farming, and ensure economic justice, Local Fair Trade Network works with community members and stakeholders to define Local Fair Trade. LFTN's goal is to develop a Local Fair Trade certification process, which would help farmers and farm workers economically and provide consumers with local, sustainable, socially responsible product choices. A WedgeShare grant would help fund the creation of the Local Fair Trade label campaign. Participating co-ops (including the Wedge) will market the label as a pledge that committed farmers and retailers are working toward Local Fair Trade certification. The label campaign will raise awareness of Local Fair Trade, which will boost both farmer and co-op sales and LFTN's profile in the funding community, allowing us to compete for more funds to further our mission. Launching the label is an important step in expanding the network of Local Fair Trade.

Northside Food Project (Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches)

The Northside Food Project addresses the need for fresh, nutritious food in North Minneapolis, while helping to generate new markets for rural producers. Food availability and access to secure food systems are rights that most Minnesotans take for granted. Yet many residents in Minneapolis don't have ready access to fresh and nutritious food. At the same time, some farmers in rural Minnesota find it difficult to maintain profitability. Still food-related health problems are exacerbated in North Minneapolis. Our mission is to be a catalyst for resident empowerment for social, economic, and nutritional improvement in the community. With Wedgeshare support we can continue to:

• Improve access to affordable, nutritious food for all residents;
• Increase community residents' knowledge and consumption of healthy and local foods;
• Renew entrepreneurial opportunities for homebased and other small businesses; and
• Improve social capacity and effective community building between critical community participants.

Women's Cancer Resource Center: Preventing Harm Minnesota

Preventing Harm MN (PHM) seeks support from Wedge Share for our Smart Choices: Creating NonToxic Environments for Children program. The Smart Choices program provides parents, childcare providers, immigrant community members, students, and others with information on how to reduce children's exposure to toxicants in the environments where they live, learn, and play. We provide tools to community participants such as recipes for homemade non-toxic cleansers; fact sheets on plastics, meat and dairy, produce, and fish; and opportunities to get involved in policy change work. Funding from WedgeShare would provide support for the coordinator and volunteer presenters, travel reimbursement, copying costs, and materials for homemade non-toxic cleansers. PHM addresses sustainability by: promoting a healthy populace; reducing the amount of toxic chemicals in our environment through education regarding non-toxic cleansers, consuming organic food, and eliminating the use of pesticides in⁄around homes; and promoting homemade cleanser use in reusable containers.

The Women's Environmental Institute at Amador Hill

WEI is an environmental justice organization, which means our mission is dedicated to advocacy, education, and organizing with low-income, Indigenous, and people of color communities who face disproportionate exposure to environmental toxins. We work to make the connections between toxic exposure and health issues more visible and to provide alternatives—both practically and through public policy change. Working to create and promote sustainable, environmentally safe agriculture alternatives is one major practical strategy at WEI, whose "alternative farm campus" is in Ammador township, about one hour north of Minneapolis.

WEI would use WedgeShare monies to: 1) partially match funding to hire a full-time Director of CSA Interns⁄Farm Manager, 2) supplement the Americorp-VISTA volunteer's capacity to reach aspiring organic farmers, farm workers, and gardeners facing local⁄global development pressure, 3) further develop WEI's organic farm-school's curriculum, 4) help ensure a feasibility study for the North Circle organically certified processing co-op facility is launched.

Youth Farm and Market Project

The Youth Farm and Market Project will use any Wedgeshare funds we receive in support of our mission to nurture relationships between urban youth and their families, their communities, and the earth around them by growing, cooking, eating and selling healthy food. Within our three main focus areas of Urban Agriculture, Youth Organizing, and Cultural Nutrition, we will use Wedgeshare funds to support the following goals:

• To increase youth competencies and qualities needed to be successful in life and work;
• To help youth develop public skills through community building projects;
• To set youth on the road to lifelong health using local, traditional, and cultural foods; and
• To provide high-quality, culturally appropriate foods for people in low-income communities.