Everyday, Burners Without Borders transforms communities through innovative disaster relief programs and community initiatives that make a lasting impact. 

 

 
 
 

Winners Announced: 2022 Burners Without Borders Community Micro-Grant Cycle

Location: - Map It STATUS: Active

*Learn more in this slidedeck about the program and 2022 winners

The Burners Without Borders Community Micro-Grant program started in 2008 and has awarded over $250,000 over the course of its existence. Grants of $100-1,500 are given to projects aimed at creating a positive impact in the world, by leveraging a relatively small amount of money against the mighty power of the community’s capacity to make a difference.

We received 106 submissions this year for the grant cycle from all over the world, addressing a myriad of social issues. The judging process was tough, but in the end, 36 projects were selected. This year’s projects ranged from maker spaces, permaculture and farming, educational workshops, and art therapy programming. Thank you to all who applied to this year’s program.

A BIG congratulations to the 2022 Burners Without Borders Micro-Grant Recipients…


Aboliti
onist School Social Workers
Los Angeles, California, USA

Abolitionist School Social Workers is a group of social workers of color, organizing in support of the students in Los Angeles Public Schools. This project seeks to organize adults (mostly BIPOC social workers) with power (as adults and as professionals) to support Black youth-led organizing. This funding supports group meetings and programming towards furthering group scholarship.

 

Accommodation for Medically Fragile Children
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Haiti Communitere, Janet Ilott

Accommodation for medically fragile children in Port-au-Prince will enable Haiti Communitere to further facilitate healthcare for medically fragile children who need to travel to Port-au-Prince for medical attention with their parents. The country’s limited medical resources are concentrated in the capital, and Haiti Communitere often receives large groups of parents with children. The project will create an emergency fund that will enable 120 free “parent nights” and purchase $300 worth of emergency food for families who are enduring massive increases in the cost of food.

Artistic Expression for Indigenous Students
Chajul, Guatemala
Limitless Horizons Ixil, Joanna Drew

An Artistic Expression course will be offered to students of Colegio Horizonte (Horizons School), this course will aid Indigenous students in developing their innate creativity, ideas, and imagination. The goal is for all students to identify and develop their own artistic voices, distinguish and use the essential elements of poetry, choreograph movement with an emphasis on Mayan music, and create a theatrical production.

 

Backpacks for the Unhomed New York
New York City, New York, USA
Lauretta Prevost, Jonah Levy, Theresa “Shiny” Galeani

Backpacks_for_the_UnhomedNew York burners will host a fun gathering to fill backpacks with useful supplies for the unhomed, including hand warmers, socks, and hand sanitizer. They add their “special sauce” by adding hand-written cards, and a laminated sheet with community support resources services for each bag. They plan on delivering these backpacks with a warm cup of coffee and a moment of human connection and warmth. Photo by: Lauretta Prevost

 

Beauford Lane Community Art Gallery
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Beauford Lane Neighborhood, Ngoc-Tran Vu

The Beauford Lane Community will build a community art gallery in its neighborhood in the form of an accessible and inclusive art shed. They plan to collaborate with elderly neighbors to create and showcase artwork and help facilitate and strengthen community bonds.

 

 

Bee Safe
Zipacon, Colombia
BWB Bogo, Charlotte de Casabianca

Bee 
Safe is a conservation, repopulation, and community education project in Zipacon, Colombia, that aims at creating a propitious habitat for bee colonies spread among 40 artisanal hives in which 80,000 native specimens can thrive. This program will expand an ongoing program of hands-on youth education and bee-keeping into an additional four schools in the region.

 

Berlin MOOP FUN
Berlin, Germany
Holger Wessels &  Berlin Burners

Berlin MOOP FUN will be deploying their Berlin-based art car “Samurai Baby” (with sound system) and 24 volunteers across three parks in the city over the summer of 2023, collecting and separating trash and recyclable materials. Their aim is to engage the community in fun conversation around MOOP, leaving no trace, and how to recycle when there are no recycling collections nearby. If you find yourself in Berlin, be sure to connect with this active burner community! Berlin Burners noticed that city parks can look like landfills after a busy summer weekend and have decided to do something about it!

Building Space for Community
St Raphael, Haiti
Fondasyon Ginen, Louino Robillard

This project will reinvest in a long-time community activation space. Six benches and a picnic table will be built under the traditional thatched “choucoune” or shelter on the Fondasyon Ginen reforested land. The seating area will be embedded with a solar panel and chargers which will help to create a bigger, more accessible, and more modern meeting space for local groups to use.

 

Burner Biochemists White Dot Training & Education
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Burner Biochemists, Gregory Sklar

Burner Biochemists are certifying ‘White Dots’ in the concert and event ecosystem to increase the number of first responders, and prevent deaths from Fentanyl overdose. They provide free online and in-person training to Burners around the world. The goal now is to train 1000 ‘white dots’ by September 2023. Fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death for ages 18-45 and the leading cause of death at concerts and events. Burner Biochemists aim to help protect 100k+ people from the dangers of this cause of death in our communities.


BWB Regional Comms
Colorado, USA
BWB Colorado, David Loudermilk

BWB Colorado is building on existing projects around improving regional communication skills. Funds will be used to purchase a radio repeater, hand-held radios, and a private business frequency to share radio communications equipment between the regional BWB group as well as the local Burning Man regional community. The equipment will ensure better communications across several groups during events and crisis situations.

 

Burners Without Borders Detroit Homeless Backpack Project
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Burners Without Borders Detroit, Danielle ‘Doxie’ Kaltz

Since 2007 BWB Detroit has been doing direct action care for people on the streets to ease the discomfort of homelessness. They will use the funds from this grant to buy new backpacks for their next round of giving. Kits filled with useful items will be shared alongside a meaningful human encounter. Over the years BWB Detroit has discovered that this project not only helps people in need, it also builds community.

 

Collective Effervescence on the Ohio River
Portsmouth, Ohio, USA
City of Portsmouth and Shawnee State University, Sean Dunne

By having regularly scheduled canoe trips, this group hopes to change the perceptions of the Ohio River. The goal is participation and enjoyment of this natural resource and getting people outside learning instead of lecturing about the river. Shawnee State Sociology students will use this project as a way of learning more about research methods. They will design and collect surveys and interview participants to measure the success of people’s enjoyment of their trip, and how many participants return to enjoy the Ohio River.

 

Cosa de Negras (Black Thing)
Argüello, Córdoba, Argentina
Mujeres de Casa Puente, Valeria Casanova

Thi
s eight-and-a-half-month theater workshop is for women and LGBT people from marginalized communities that would otherwise not be able to access theater or audiovisual classes. The project will create a safe space for voices and experiences that can be turned into a short film. Meeting twice a week the group will write a script, create theater and record a short film including hands-on post-production work. The participatory process of creating together and expressing shared realities through a short film is aimed at teaching new skills, developing community, and highlighting the voices of marginalized women.

CRV Recycling Art Collector
Sacramento, California, USA
Atrium916, Shira Lane

Inside the Atrium you will find locally made upcycled products for sale supporting the local eco friendly maker community, to build circular micro manufacturing in Sacramento.

Encouraging community recycling in Sacramento through a multi-purpose, creative recycling collection, this solar-powered art installation will be functional, educational, and artistic. This project will encourage careful recycling and help visitors to Old Sacramento feel like they are contributing to a collaborative art piece by recycling properly. Photo by: Melody Hitt

 

 

Food Sharing and Bio Needs
Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Food Not Bombs, Barry Goldberg

For the past 6 years, Food Not Bombs Eastside Cleveland chapter has shared free food, no questions asked. This project is to support an ADA-accessible, fully serviced porta potty for six months of use in the public lot where they already provide food and other services. Having this unit will help increase volunteerism, make things more comfortable for folks waiting in line for food, and will create disability access to restrooms for the many unhoused people in the neighborhood.

 

Fossil-Free Camp Infrastructure
Monroe, Washington, USA
BWB Washington, Frank Sanborn

Plans are in place to build a fossil-free group camp infrastructure in support of the restoration of the riparian forest on the Skykomish River near Monroe, WA. This group will gather materials and build four portable group classrooms/food areas. They will be hosting group builds days at The Facility at Edmonds College on the second Saturday of the month.  Design and plans will be published in the Salish Sea Restoration Wiki and on The Community Resiliency Project / Humaninsights.org

 

Garden of Mutuality: A Collaborative Mosaic Project
Asheville, North Carolina, USA
Asheville Poverty Alliance, Jennifer Murphy

Garden of Mutuality is a collaborative mosaic project that will create a mural and paving stones for the 12 Baskets Cafe Garden, catering to community members regardless of financial means. The cafe and adjacent garden is an alternative social space that serves hot free meals and pantry items rescued from local restaurants. The space builds relationships among neighbors, housed and unhoused, by deconstructing stereotypes. The Garden of Mutuality project will provide supplies, instruction, and space for community members to drop into the cafe garden during lunch hours to create mosaic paving stones and a mural.

Generation Remembrance: Culturally Significant Tree Trail for Ukrainian Immigrants in metro-Detroit
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Loveren Collections, Nina Lawrin

Since the war broke out in Ukraine over 400 youth have been displaced and joined the community in Metro Detroit. This project will install a tree trail and perennial food forest highlighting culturally salient Ukrainian foodways, and people-plant relationships at a Ukrainian school to help foster cultural remembrance across generations within the diaspora. The team of volunteers hopes to help foster generational ecological knowledge retention amongst Ukrainian immigrant communities in metro Detroit.


Green Roof

Central Bekaa, Lebanon
Lebanese Association for Development and Communication (LADC), Giulia Cingolani Green

Green Roof is creating a rooftop garden at the LADC community center. This garden will support the local community, including the 99% of Syrian refugees in Lebanon that are considered food insecure. 73% of Syrian households spend the majority of their monthly income on food, and consumption of important nutrients is at an all-time low.
Produce from the garden will be used to provide nutritious snacks for the 600 students attending regular classes at the community center and any excess food will be distributed to local families in need.

IKIGAI Explorers
Bogotá, Colombia
BWB Bogotá, Charlotte de Casabianca

Since April 2022, BWB Bogotá has been offering original educational content to 30 under-resourced kids in Bogotá, Colombia to share about alternative career paths. In phase 2 of this project, each youth will choose their preferred path, co-ideate, and develop a 3-month long group project aimed at highlighting their individual “reasons for being” based on the Japanese concept of Ikigai philosophy (life purpose, or reason for being).

 


Inclusive Fairborn Community Outreach
Fairborn, Ohio, USA
Inclusive Fairborn, A Tassy

Inclusive Fairborn is a volunteer collective in Fairborn, Ohio that engages in community care and celebrates diversity and inclusion. For this project, they will be building kits for unhoused members of their community that includes a tent, clothing, useful tools, a blanket, food, and more. Their goal is to help everyone get what they need and to eventually start a mutual aid fund. Photos by: A Tassy and Logan Rickert

 

Kijemy ūpú Mãguty (Food House) or PATAXÓ – Cultural Center
Corumbau, Bahia, Brazil
BWB Brazil, Karine Porto

Kijemy ūpú Mãguty (Food House) is an Indigenous community-led project that addresses the need for a traditional Indigenous kitchen so that the community can receive visitors and carry out important cultural rituals for the Pataxó. They will also build a dry bathroom to support tourism in the village. The village is home to approximately 11 families and 35 residents that will benefit from the kitchen daily. The outdoor kitchen will be integral to maintaining culture, the communities financial stability through tourism, and supporting children in living the traditional way of life. This project is in partnership with BWB Brazil.

Mobile Horno (Oven)
Los Angeles, California, USA
BWB Los Angeles & Friends

Mobile Horno is a community-led initiative to create a mobile Earth-friendly oven (Horno) model to provide nourishment on wheels, while educating about Earthen building, the story of migration, and bringing the community together. The team will document the building process into easily understandable steps to provide a toolkit for anyone who would like to build a mobile horno to share with their communities. Photo from: Pedacito de la Tierra project.

 

MOCT Community Nursery Project
Murehwa district, Zimbabwe
Mangwende Orphan Care Trust (MOCT), Matthew Shoniwa

MOCT is building a plant nursery based on the principles of permaculture. The nursery will be a tool to educate the local community about the importance of caring for the natural environment while also providing food. Using simple materials and methods the nursery will be accessible and shared with neighboring communities, providing livelihood and meaningful activities for the youth. Further benefits include increased biodiversity and habitat, the improvement of soil and water management, and the creation of more resilient communities.


Nuestro Puente al Mundo Virtual (Our Bridge to the Virtual World)
Zinacantán, Chiapas, México
Yo’onik Comunidad de Aprendizaje, Yolanda Hernández

Nuestro Puente al Mundo Virtual is a space where Indigenous community members can gather to learn computer and digital skills for personal, professional, organizational, and community benefit. The goal is to connect with the rest of the world by sharing videos and podcasts by students, sharing products made by local artisans, and digitizing original/traditional embroidery and textile designs as part of a long-term strategy to preserve their Mayan cultural heritage.

 

Permaculture Design Course
Kenya, Africa / Kakuma Refugee Camp
Life Foundation Aid, Musa Munga

This nine-week-long permaculture design course will take place in the Kakuma refugee camp located in Kenya, with five youth leaders from the Kakuma camp participating in the training. Kakuma camp (established 1992) and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement had a population of 196,666 registered refugees and asylum-seekers at the end of July 2020. The objective of this course is to empower Kakuma residents with information to restore the environment using permaculture practices.

 

Promoting Community Engagement in Biodegradable Waste
Kampala, Uganda
Tautia Youth and Women Initiative, Allen Vicky Nampijja

Women and girls will actively participate in climate change mitigation through sustainable waste management, ultimately creating compost that can be used in organic farming and will encourage urban farming. The project has existed for one year as a community service initiative, and the project will increase the communities capacity both technically and financially to manage, collect, and dispose of solid waste.

 


Thrive: Spring 2023 Event
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Thrive Events and Community, Hannah Friedman

Thrive events combine radical political education and skill-sharing with epic, joyful celebrations. In the spirit of Adrienne Maree Brown’s ‘Pleasure Activism’, we believe that people choose to do things they enjoy. With funds secured from this grant they will cultivate an activist space at their spring event in Chicago that is welcoming, delightful, and effective.

 


Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Museum Garden Engagement

Nixon, Nevada, USA
Ripple Project, Jacob Mast

In collaboration with the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Museum, the team from the LAGI Challenge winner Ripple will be building a traditional Paiute shade structure called a “haba” which is a small pavilion supported by wooden beams and a willow thatched roof, in the medicinal garden of the Paiute Tribute Museum and Visitor Center. Under the haba they will build benches built from old cottonwood trees that fell recently at a historic farm on the reservation. This space will then be used as an outdoor classroom and gathering space for the museum.

Radio Tower Repurposing Proposal
Kailua-Koa, Hawaii, USA
100.5 LPFM, Michael Sofranco

Kona LPFM 100.5Kona 100.5 LPFM will install a new radio tower to expand radio coverage on the island of Kona, which relies on good communications to deliver messages not just in times of emergency, but also in their everyday lives. The current radio signal does not penetrate the hilly zones that border the coastal areas, leaving community members without contact. This project will relocate a 150′ Radio Tower to repurpose it for a repeater in the South Kona area to further enhance the community FM Radio signal coverage.


Sacramento Region Burner Donation Barrel

Sacramento, California, USA
BWB Sacramento Region Chapter, Angela Gentry

The Burner Donation Barrel is an upcycled water barrel to be used as a mobile collection barrel designed to accept donations of food, clothing, and other goods as needed at local regional events. A QR code will be printed on the barrel so people may donate dollars in lieu of physical items as well. The project will be activated twelve times per year in and around the Sacramento area.

 

Sanitation and Hygiene Improvement Project
Kakumiro District, Uganda
Bugangaizi Self-Help Alliance Program (BSAP), Ponsious Businge

BSAP will purchase and install a 10,000 liters water tank for hand washing and rainwater harvesting to promote hygiene and sanitation. The St. John Bosco Primary school in Kakumiro District is one of the rural, poverty-stricken, and hard to reach districts in Uganda. This school is located in a remote, difficult to reach area, and enrolls the highest number of children with disabilities in the district. People travel distances of about 2.5 km to look for water. About 55,000 people including communities around these schools will be reached directly by the project.

Teapa Mexico Schools
Tabasco, Mexico
BWB Sacramento, Susana Orozco

This project supports the Indigenous families who work for the cacao farms in Teapa Mexico. The children who attend this school often endure 110º F temperatures in the classroom. The grant money will provide this school with two AC units. The communities in Tabasco have been impacted several times by inundations and other natural disasters over the past years. As a result of this, many schools and local hospitals have lost their basic supplies. This rural school located in Teapa Tabasco provides education to thirty-one elementary school students of six different grades within the same classroom. Valagro, a local cacao farm association, and BWB Sacramento Chapter have partnered with this school for AC and basic school supplies before the end of 2022. 

The Back Wall: Art Uncuffed
Columbus, Ohio, USA
Healing Broken Circles, Kendra Hovey

The Back Wall is a new performance collective run by a core team of formerly incarcerated artists. Art Uncuffed is aimed at deepening the conversation around criminal justice via multi-disciplinary arts including music, storytelling, theater arts, and spoken word. The Art Uncuffed events afford artists the opportunity to have their voices amplified and their talents celebrated while carrying forward the stories of those who remain incarcerated.

 

Two Spirit Momentum 2023
Nevada & California, USA
Native Solidarity Project, Kitten Calfee

This project supports three nights of accommodations in San Francisco for twelve people from the Black Rock Desert Region attending the largest Two Spirit Pow Wow in the United States- produced by Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS). The Native Solidarity Project will also support participants with opportunities to attend various educational and cultural exchange activities with their peers at this important national Pow Wow.

 

Xanadu Teen Crew (aka Xu Crew)
Boise, Idaho, USA
Idaho Burners Alliance, Micah Lauer

Xanadu Teen Crew (Xu Crew) is a project for teens to explore art, literature, and music in the context of creating. It is being developed by teens for teens. The goal of Xu Crew is to create an ongoing teen community with a focus on sustainability housed at Xanadu, an indoor/outdoor community space owned by Idaho Burners Alliance. 

 

 



***Do you have an idea for a project in your community? You are invited to apply in 2023!***
Sign up for our newsletter HERE to get notified about our next grant cycle!  


Call for Applications: 
After a two-year hiatus, BWB is excited to announce the launch of our 12th annual Community Microgrant Program, and you are invited to apply! To date, BWB has provided over $250K in grants for over 120 projects that have made a positive impact around the world, by leveraging a relatively small amount of money against the mighty power of the community’s capacity to make a difference.

GRANT DETAILS
Applications Open: September 19, 2022
Applications Close: October 20, 2022 at 11:59pm PDT

Grant Awards: $100-$1,500

Link to Online Application: https://forms.gle/V57NvKaGJueWitcw5
(If you have any issues with the online form- please email the address below and we’ll send you a simple word document application)

We aspire to be in touch with all of our applicants by mid-November and to send funds to grant recipients before the end of the 2022 calendar year.

BWB GRANT PROGRAM VISION
Through BWB’s grant program, we are committed to jump-starting creative, civic projects that both grow and positively impact the community. We know that real change starts at the grassroots level and healthy communities emerge from citizens participating in actively creating the kinds of communities they want to live in. BWB prides itself on accomplishing a lot with very little money by engaging the power of community and innovative problem-solving to make a difference.

GRANT GUIDELINES
BWB didn’t evolve and emerge by creating a lot of restrictive rules. BWB is about giving ourselves permission to evoke the wildest parts of our imaginations to tackle issues we care about. Really, the sky is the limit. You are encouraged to collaborate with members of your community and dream big! What do you care about? How can your community creatively address a particular issue to make a positive impact? What elements can you invite in that will make it engaging and fun?

We suggest you submit a formatted budget. Here is a link to some budget templates– any of which would be appropriate. You can copy any of the budget templates into your own spreadsheet or google form to use.

Suggestions for a quality grant proposal:

– Look at the BWB Grant Impact & Criteria Document to see how we think about grants.
– Reach out to your local Burning Man Regional Contact and ask if they might be an advisor.
– Watch our video “How to write Quality Grants: Burning Man 101” (Starts rough but gets going at (9:00 in)
– Listen to our podcast  “Targeted Grant Writing: with Meta-Regional Jacqui Latendresse

WHAT WE DON’T FUND: Paying salaries or stipends or art projects that lack a community, civic engagement component.  Fundraising Events.  Capital Campaigns.

If you are looking for inspiration to create your own project, check out the 2018 award winners, 2017 award winners & 2016 award winners to get an idea of the types of projects we fund.

QUESTIONS WE ASK OURSELVES WHEN REVIEWING SUBMISSIONS:
In an attempt to help you consider whether or not your project is suitable for our grant program, we’ve provided a list of questions our judges ask when reviewing submissions.  These questions are not hard lines but touch points and things to consider.

Feasibility

  • Does the project’s mission/goals fit with BWB’s? Is it civic/community service minded (vs. art for art’s sake)?
  • How well does this project leverage volunteer resources and community resources against a relatively small injection of money?
  • Does the project seem reasonable/feasible given the budget, timeframe, and volunteers who are available to complete the project?
  • What experience does the project leader have in organizing projects? How much support will they require from BWB to make the project successful?
  • Is this project likely to get funded by a different donor? Is our grant important for this project’s existence?
  • What other funds need to be raised for this project to be successful?
  • Will this particular grant money make a significant impact on the project?
  • Will there be any income from this project? If so, how will the profit be used in the service of the community?

Community Engagement and Impact

  • Is the project interactive and participatory? Does it engage the broader community beyond the grant recipients? Does the project bring together a variety of stakeholders or communities?
  • How many people will this project touch and in what way?
  • How will this project affect the community over time? What is the life of the project after the grant has been given and the initial project is completed?
  • Is the community inviting this project and is there a demonstrated need for this project?
  • How will the impacts be measured? What is the quality of the impact vs the quantity?
  • How does this project promote community leadership?
  • Is the execution of the project engaging and fun for volunteers?

Innovation

  • How does the project engage creative ideas or processes?

Questions? bwbgrants@burningman.org

Privacy Statement:
Your privacy and trust are important to us. Burners Without Borders strives to follow the best practices for data and protection and privacy. We do not share the information you share with us beyond our internal systems, which may include your local regional contact in order to further connect you to the Burning Man Network.

> How to create a Project.