Overview
Starting in 2023, increasingly concerned about the climate crisis, Pace e Bene launched a program to provide grant funding to local projects that capture carbon, rebuild ecosystems, and heal the Earth. The funds for this come from a fee we add to the necessary travel our organization conducts. Rather than participating in large-scale, unverifiable carbon offset programs, we decided to work directly with on-the-ground communities.
With the resources from travel fees, we help hyper-local efforts such as tree planting, ecosystem repair, wildlife habitat restoration, wild plants propagation, and so forth. Each project must involve youth, and intergenerational organizing is encouraged. We are excited to support projects that mean a lot to your community and engage people creatively and from the heart.
We also recognize that no carbon offset program can justify a large carbon footprint. It is most important to reduce our energy consumption. Pace e Bene strives to keep our overall carbon footprint low, including building a regional trainers network and hosting virtual events for most of our activities. We encourage you to join us in lowering your carbon footprint, including by reducing air travel, shifting to a vegetarian diet, supporting renewable energy, emphasizing conservation, and more. You can find resources on this at the Global Footprint Network.
We would like to thank Franciscan Action Network for partnering with us in this work. The carbon offset fees for our shared Pilgrimage To Assisi in 2024 funded this first round of grantees.
Make a donation to the Environmental Healing Grants here. (Use the dropdown menu under “Select a Fund” to make an earmarked donation.)
2023 Awardees
The West Jessamine Unity Garden
Organized by the Social Justice Club, Environmental Club, and Future Farmers of America
w/ Darlene Barnes, mentor
The West Jessamine Unity Garden is a wild plants garden at a Kentucky high school. It will include native trees, shrubs, flowers, and ground coverings that are most beneficial to the local environment based on student research. It will provide food and shelter to wildlife and pollinators and also improve the environment by helping to fight soil erosion, filter pollutants, absorb carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen. Students will design the garden layout, prepare the soil, plant and care for the plants with continued watering, fertilizing, and weeding as needed to maintain the space. The Unity Garden will help improve our school climate by building positive relationships between students from different backgrounds and social circles working together on a project of shared interest and value. We hope that this project will make a lasting impact on the environment both inside and outside of the school.
Three amazing clubs from West Jessamine High School are working together on our Unity Garden project. The West Jessamine High School Social Justice Club is a student-led organization that was created as a safe place for students to discuss different issues of social justice while practicing respect, empathy and open-mindedness, sharing ideas to improve our school & community, and empowering students to make a difference. The West Jessamine Environmental Club is another student-led initiative to reduce our school's carbon footprint by recycling and hosting an annual community tree planting event with Tree-Plenish. Students from the local FFA chapter (also known as the Future Farmers of America) who are also enrolled in agriculture classes at the Jessamine Career & Technology Center are also joining in to learn about the benefits of native plants while helping design and install the Unity Garden.
Tree-Planting Project, Oxford, ME
Ervin Brown, Hannah Thiboutot, and Richard Stoehner
w/ Kathleen Fraize, teacher and mentor
After watching the documentary Our Planet by David Attenborough, we have realized that there has been a decrease in undeveloped land in recent years. We hope to reverse these effects. To do so, we propose a mass tree planting in our region of Maine. We have contacted the West Paris Forestry District of Maine, which will supply a number of free trees for planting in addition to the trees that we could purchase. After speaking with the forestry department, we plan to host a tree planting workshop for the middle school. In addition, the district forester will work with our team to plan the project and identify organizations that can help us obtain the greatest amount of trees for this reforestation project. We are working on contacting all the principals in the district to plant trees at every elementary, middle, and high school at MSAD17. We will be getting multiple types of trees as well to make for a diversity of trees at the schools. We believe that this can make our community greater as a whole by allowing kids from all the schools to work together in helping these trees grow.
About the Team:
Richard Stoehner: I'm a 14 year old who's also an 8th grade student and a straight-A student. I love math, it's my favorite subject. I love to play soccer. Right now, I'm playing indoor soccer for the Ingersoll arena in Auburn, Maine. I live in Oxford, Maine.
Ervin Brown: I am a 13 year old, 8th grade student with straight A's. I do well in most subjects, but my favorite is math. I plan to program video games in the future, and currently live in West Paris, Maine.
Hannah Thiboutot: I'm a 14 year old 8th grader who excels in science. I live in South Paris with my dad, step-mom, 2 step brothers, and 10 month old sister.
Program Details
The Pace e Bene Environmental Healing Grants program was launched in 2023. While we try to minimize our footprint, our organization has some necessary travel. To mitigate the impacts on the climate, we apply a surcharge that goes into the pool of funds for the Environmental Healing Grants.
Where the funds come from:
$50-125 per flight surcharge when we travel to present workshops or give talks; or when we organize an event that requires people to travel to attend.
$50-125 per flight donation contributed voluntarily from travel conducted/required for any purpose by our network and organizers
Contributions from other partner groups and organizations seeking to offset the necessary travel of their work with a locally-based project rather than a corporate offset scheme.
Contributions from individuals who wish to support this program as a form of carbon offset funding for their personal travels.
How this amount is determined:
There’s much debate about the specific details of carbon offsets—how much you should donate, where the funds will go, how far they’ll stretch, the impacts of the global economy on all those numbers. So, rather than get too technical about it, we’re taking a different route. We encourage you to make a contribution that feels appropriate to account for the impacts of your travel choices. For our part, we can promise to give the grant funds to real people doing environmental work that is meaningful in their communities.
How we disperse funds:
Application is by invitation only.
You can let our staff know about a potential project to consider here.
When the total funds reach or surpass $1000, we invite a group to send us a proposal for their project. The staff reviews the proposal and awards the amount.
What we fund:
Locally-specific projects of any scale that capture carbon, rebuild ecosystems, and heal the Earth. For example: tree planting, reforestation, wetlands restoration, urban gardens, wild plants gardens at schools or faith centers.
Youth-led or intergenerational projects
We specifically seek out projects that include strong aspects of social justice, inclusivity, diversity, and creativity.
What we do not fund:
Donations or fundraisers for other organizations
Technological concepts still in development