is thrilled to announce our Grant Partners for the 2014 grant cycle. We received a record number of applications this year, and definitely had our work cut out for us deciding how to allocate funds among a highly qualified pool of applicants. After a lively discussion and some tough decisions, our Advisory Committee selected five partners to receive Invoking the Pause grants:

•    A New Story to Heal the Earth: Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
•    Breaking Up with Fossil Fuels: As You Sow
•    Raising Our Voices: Convening for Key Environmental Messengers: Environmental Entrepreneurs
•    An Investigation of Fracking in California: Mark Hertsgaard and Holly Kernan 
•    Game for the Caribbean Climate: University of Miami  

A New Story to Heal the Earth: Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments

The Alliance of Nurses for a Healthy Environment will bring together collaborators from different perspectives to imagine a carbon neutral future and engage in dialogue about how to get there. The group includes nurses, climate change experts, leaders of communities that are being directly affected by fossil-fuel dependence, and several artists. They hope to come away from the Pause with new language and images to communicate positive possibilities emerging from efforts to control climate change. The aim is to make real change by developing a participatory project that invites the public to join in creating this new story.

Breaking Up with Fossil Fuels: As You Sow

Working with media consulting firm Hastings Group and other allies, As You Sow will assemble a communications campaign called “Breaking Up with Fossil Fuels.” This initiative seeks to combat the prevailing opinion that our society cannot function without energy supplied by the fossil fuel industry. They will use their Pause grant to undertake the core creative planning process and produce a concept paper to seek additional grants from other organizations for the roll-out and implementation.

An Investigation of Fracking in California: Mark Hertsgaard and Holly Kernan

These two award-winning journalists will collaborate to produce a print and radio journalistic account of fracking in California, a fast-developing controversy that will have a profound effect on the future of global warming both in California and around the world.  If fracking can go forward in California—a longtime pioneer green consciousness and public policy, not to mention the world’s eighth largest economy—it will send a powerful signal that other regions should permit fracking as well. Their investigation will seek to answer the question as to why politicians with strong environmental track records have suddenly begun to speak of fracking as a positive option.

Game for the Caribbean Climate: University of Miami

This team, led by Lien Tran at the University of Miami, will travel to Barbados to conduct a two-day workshop during which climate change-related games adapted to the Caribbean context will be played. The games will serve as a catalyst for dialogue regarding climate change adaptation needs and concerns in the Caribbean and will inform new ideas for collaboration and innovation to strengthen community resilience. Feedback captured via discussions and evaluations from the workshop will further determine the scope of methodology designed for the adapted games.

We are honored to be partnering with such an impressive group of individuals and organizations using creative approaches for addressing climate change. Stay tuned for news on each of these projects as the year progresses!