Deadline: 7-Jun-21
The Canadian Roots Exchange has announced the Land and Food Sovereignty Stream to support strengths-based, community-focused and youth-led projects taking place in communities across Canada.
The Land and Food Sovereignty Funding Stream aims to increase opportunities to participate in land-based programming, learn about food and medicines and engage with knowledge keepers. Projects in this stream need to be Indigenous-led and youth-focused, although community-focused and intergenerational activities can be run.
Project Focus Areas
Successful projects will fall within the following areas:
- Community Gardens and Food Knowledge Programming: Projects that focus on increasing access to foods, knowledge about traditional and healthy foods and building skills around planting, growing and harvesting. Projects in this focus area can include community gardens, initiatives to start family gardens, workshops about cooking, harvesting and preserving etc.
- Digital Land Connections: Projects will support youth to access food and land teachings in the digital space. This can include online social media campaigns, videos, digital workshops, etc. Projects can be focused on sharing knowledge, but also on preserving knowledge from Elders and Knowledge Keepers.
- Land-based Camps and Programming: Projects will engage youth in participating in programming on the land. These can include overnight camps or workshop series. Projects will work to increase youth’s connection to the land and knowledge of food and land teachings. Projects in this focus area can include: medicine walks, ceremony, foraging activities, water-based projects (such as water walks), recreational land based activities (eg canoeing), language camps, traditional hunting and fishing and other activities.
- Sustainable Food Systems: Projects will focus on revitalizing traditional food systems, including increasing the knowledge of community around preservation and reemergence. Project can include activities such as improving soil health, mapping territory to identify risk factors (such as chemical run off, invasive species), learning the stories of food, planting projects, and protecting water ecosystems (wild rice revitalization, etc).
Funding Information
- Funding of up to $25,000 will be provided to projects/groups that seek to create impactful community change and increase the wellness, resiliency and engagement of Indigenous youth.
- Projects can be up to 12 months in length.
Eligibility Criteria
- CREation will only fund grassroots Indigenous youth groups consisting of a minimum of 3 youth.
- Please note: for the purpose of this program, CRE defines Indigenous as status and non-status First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in Canada, living both on and off-reserve.
- Eligible groups and projects include:
- Unincorporated/grassroots youth groups/collectives/councils comprised primarily of Indigenous youth
- Small, incorporated youth groups (note: CRE defines a small organization as groups that have 1-8 full-time employees and an operating budget of less than $500,000)
- Projects must serve primarily serve Indigenous youth
For more information, visit https://canadianroots.ca/programs/creation/