The Delaware Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) will provide three $100 grants to educators to support natural resource conservation service-learning projects. These grants honor SWCD Conservation Education Teacher and Volunteer award winners who demonstrated outstanding efforts to help others learn about and care for natural resources.

The Conservation Education and Stewardship Grant is intended to support learning experiences which are used as springboards for individuals to discover how they can be responsible “givers” to and not “takers” from their community’s environment. These experiences should promote natural resource stewardship through individual action. This involvement helps the local environment and also helps strengthen participants by their becoming more aware of the links between themselves and the local environment. Projects should reinforce the principle that each individual is an important part of the community and if they respect and take care of the community, the community will take care of them.

We eat the food, drink the water, breath the air and enjoy the views, but only a few of us walk the fields and forests on a regular basis and understand what these lands need from us in order to sustain productivity. It is in the field where lessons come to life. The hope is that this grant will help open some eyes and reach out some hands to conservation on the land learning activities.