Building Worker and Research Networks, and Empowering Future Scientists are Themes in the Haury Program 2019 Fall Grant Awards

The Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice (Haury Program) is pleased to announce awards for its Fall 2019 competitive grant cycle. The program made awards in three categories: partnering grants, seed grants and challenge grant finalists. Challenge grant finalists will compete for the Challenge Grant Award in Spring 2020. Funding awarded in this cycle totaled nearly one-quarter of a million dollars.

Partnering Grants

Four proposals won the inaugural Haury Program Partnering Award. Recognizing the benefits and challenges of forming new collaborations, the Haury Program created this award to facilitate connecting the University of Arizona (UArizona) and the community in new or enhanced partnerships for environmental and social justice work.

Yue "Max" Li, UArizona School of Natural Resources and the Environment, Raye Winch, Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, and members of the Tucson Cooperative Network will work together in the project Building a Network that Incubates Worker-owned Cooperatives for a Regenerative Society. This new partnership will explore the creation of worker-owned cooperatives as a business model to develop regenerative businesses such as rainwater harvesting, habitat restoration, sustainable food production, and also build individual capacities centered on indigenous values.     

Kathleen J. Kennedy, Associate Professor of Practice at the UArizona John and Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences, and Tres English, Sustainable Tucson, will expand their collaboration to engage the community of Tucson in visualizing and creating a path to build a sustainable community in Southern Arizona by 2045. The project, Sustainable Tucson 2045, strives to increase awareness and inspire action on the challenges ahead.

The partnership between Lisa Bowden, Executive Director of the Kore Press Institute, and Deanna Lewis, Research Specialist at the UArizona Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health Gender Diversity Initiative intends to address the pressing need for safer, more inclusive educational ecosystems, environments, and practices cognizant of health outcome disparities for LGBTQ+ youth. The project, Gender Diversity Initiative, incorporates identifying additional, new partners, including directly impacted community, allies, and challengers.

The project, A Borderlands Observatory: Understanding and Communicating the Effects of Border Enforcement and Policy on Sonoran Desert Communities, led by Jeffrey Banister, UArizona Southwest Center, and Vicki Gaubeca, Director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, plans to build a team that works for an ethical and equitable program of collaborative inquiry among academic, humanitarian, and environmental communities. Partners will work toward a common language and collective goals for sharing data and local knowledge on the impacts of border militarization in the Sonoran Desert region.

“The Sonoran Desert border region,” commented Jeff Banister, “is home to a broad array of social justice and environmental groups. With support from the Haury Program, we are developing a framework for collaboration between researchers and community partners to protect, extend, and communicate the innovative ways that human and non-human communities have resisted, restored, and flourished in the context of border militarization.”

Seed Grants

Seed grants foster authentic partnerships between the UArizona and the community to develop one-time or well-defined prototype projects for completion within two years. Two new seed proposals supporting long-term efforts for systematic change were awarded funding in Fall 2019.

Tucson Bee Collaborative: Broadening the Network is a partnership effort to increase awareness of Tucson’s exceptional bee diversity, and to empower future scientists by engaging them in research activities. The project, led by Kim Franklin and Debra Colodner, Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, and Dr. Wendy Moore, UArizona Department of Entomology and Curator of the Insect Collection, will connect biodiversity conservation with STEM education, by involving high school students in real-world research on native bees.

“The Tucson Bee Collaborative (tucsonbeecollaborative.com) aims to connect people to their environment and youth to well-paid careers, all through the unassuming native bee.” Said Debra Colodner, “Tucson is a hotspot for native bee diversity, with over 750 species who do the work of pollinating our desert plants as well as food crops. High school, Pima College, and University of Arizona students, Desert Museum volunteers and scientists from the latter three institutions are working together to study native bee populations and learn how to protect them. We are grateful to the Haury Program for funding this pilot project, which will lay the groundwork for future expansion.”

For more information see: https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/desert-abuzz-bees

Building environmental and climate education equity and action in K-6 education, led by Rebecca Lipson, UArizona Assistant Director of Education, and Janna Acevedo, Director of the TUSD Magnet School Program, intends to develop the next generation of environmental leaders by engaging youth from diverse backgrounds on environmental science and climate change topics. The project includes strengthening TUSD’s teachers’ skills in teaching climate science and sustainability.  

Challenge Grants

From Letters of Interest submitted, reviewers chose three finalist teams addressing major environmental and social challenges of the 21st century to move forward. The Haury Program provides each finalist team, comprised of UA and community members, $10,000 to complete a feasibility study and prepare a presentation to a judging panel in April 2020. The judges may award one team the 3-year funding if they determine the project meets the standard of addressing root causes and creating systemic change. The Challenge Grant finalists are:

Compost for the Future, Harvest Against Hunger, led by Ilse Rojas, UArizona Compost Cats, and Barbara Eiswerth, Iskashitaa Refugee Network

FARMacy: A Prescription for a Healthier Community, led by Elizabeth Sparks, UArizona Tucson Village Farm, and Alissa Sadalla, El Rio Health

Southern Arizona Microfinance Initiative: Innovative and Sustainable Economic Development in and with Marginalized Communities, led by Francisca Villegas, YWCA Southern Arizona and Elise Lopez, UArizona Consortium on Gender-Based Violence

More details about these and other awarded projects, visit https://www.haury.arizona.edu/mission/awards-database