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Description
A foundation that funds small projects which benefit Austin east
side neighborhoods, build community, and leverage the passions,
talents and time of neighbors.
Project Criteria
Each project will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
· It represents the personal passion of the organizer;
· It builds upon a neighborhood treasure;
· It involves other neighbors with matching time and/or
goods.
The most significant criteria is the
involvement of other people.
What Will be Funded
Projects that bring neighbors together, preferrably involving
a built place to which people can return.
What Will NOT Be Funded
Staff salaries or operating costs of existing organizations.
Funding Amount
Up to $250
Examples of Projects
Whereas $250 doesn't sound like a lot, here are some examples
of what has been done with precisely that amount in Seattle.
This is grassroots community involvement that changes lives.
And it starts with one person's idea.
In one neighborhood, where
fallen apples created a rodent problem each year, a woman organized
her neighbors to make cider using a press she had rented with
Small Sparks money.
Two men in Delridge helped
their neighbors build birdhouses, more than thirty of which were
installed in nearby Westcrest Park.
In front of a youth center
on Capitol Hill, neighbors joined street youth to create the
Garden of Homeless Angels, a memorial to homeless youth who have
died.
One memorable project
focused on Beacon Tower, a high-rise for low-income seniors and
people with disabilities on North Beacon Hill. Even though
Beacon Tower is surrounded by single-family homes, most seniors
who live there have been isolated: neighbors don't enter
the locked buildings and few seniors venture out. A young
neighbor who wanted to change that worked with Beacon Tower residents
to plan an event that would bring together Tower and non-Tower
neighbors: a paper airplane flying competition. Everyone in the
neighborhood got an invitation to come out on a Saturday morning
either to fly paper airplanes from the Tower's fifteenth floor
or just to watch. Neighborhood businesses provided prizes
for those whose airplanes went the farthest or hit a ten-foot
bull's-eye. Tower residents treated their neighbors to
homemade baked goods. Then everyone went outdoors together to
pick up the paper airplanes that littered the neighborhood.
From Neighbor Power: Building Community The
Seattle Way
by Jim Diers
Coaching
Funded projects will receive assistance from a "neighborhood
coach" who has had experience creating his or her own Small
Sparks project.
Who May Apply
Any individual that lives in Austin, between IH-35 and Airport,
north of Town Lake up to Airport Blvd.
For More Information, Contact
Julie Wade Levy
1001 Lydia St.
Austin, TX 78702
(512) 293-8537
Special thanks to Jim Diers for the
ideas and inspiration.
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