Category: Announcements

The Vermont Community Foundation has announced $447,500 in grants from its VT COVID-19 Response Fund to support activities and events that re-engage Vermonters, particularly youth, in community events during summer 2021. 

The Vermont Community Foundation is seeking proposals from community-based organizations in support of Vermonters’ access to mental health and suicide prevention care.

Vice President for Grants and Community Investments Sarah Waring describes how the American Rescue Plan will advance the Community Foundation's COVID-19 recovery initiatives and impact philanthropy broadly in Vermont.

"With each of these initiatives, the issues underlying them are systemic and they pre-date the pandemic. We're asking the question, 'What's the role for philanthropy and for a community foundation in addressing them across Vermont communities with an eye on the long-term?' We believe that doing so is fundamental to the long term resilience of Vermont communities as we come out of this pandemic and face the years ahead." 

On March 23rd, the Community Foundation hosted an afternoon of sharing and discussion about the impact of the VT COVID-19 Response Fund, how giving can help Vermont recover and rebuild in the year ahead, and what lessons philanthropy needs to carry forward.

Last September, we announced five recovery initiatives that address key challenges magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic and set the state on a pathway to more equity and greater community and economic resilience in the face of future disruption: Rural Entrepreneurship, Food System Resilience, Rural Connectivity, Learning in Transition, and Welcoming, Equitable, Anti-Racist Communities. Over the past few months, we have interviewed the team leaders for each recovery initiative to understand why the Community Foundation chose to focus on each as part of its pandemic recovery strategy.

Between the COVID-19 pandemic’s disproportionate impacts on BIPOC communities, public visibility to senseless police killings, and the brutal treatment of American citizens expressing their free speech, 2020 was a perfect recipe for the United States—and Vermont—to reawaken to the deeply embedded systemic racism that exists in our country. This renewed attention to the circumstances that BIPOC individuals face every day presents an opportunity to put Vermont in a better place post-pandemic that is welcoming and inclusive to everyone.

Farming and farm-based products are embedded in the cultural fabric of Vermont. Agriculture may not look like it did fifty years ago but it is still critical to Vermont’s economy, health, and working landscape. This has proven to be fundamental to our resilience during the pandemic. Vermont’s food system—growers, processors, distributors, restaurants, grocery stores, farmers’ markets, etc.—continue to meet the demand from local consumers uncertain of national supply chains and they are stretching in new ways to ensure no Vermonters go hungry.

A June 2020 research study found that Vermont ranked second in the nation for jobs lost due to the coronavirus pandemic. Even with more Vermonters back to work, COVID-19 continues to take a toll: 22,000 fewer Vermonters are working now as compared to last year and jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector are still down 35 percent.