Keep Maryland Beautiful Grants Available for Environmental Education

Friends of Patapsco Valley & Heritage Greenway awarded KMB grant for their planting and stream clean-up project.

The Maryland Environmental Trust (MET) is now accepting applications for grants through the Keep Maryland Beautiful program to help volunteer-based, nonprofit groups and communities develop environmental education projects and solve natural resource issues.

MET is offering two types of grants, given annually, through the program:

The Margaret Rosch Jones Award of up to $2,000 is awarded to nonprofit groups or communities for an ongoing project or activity that has demonstrated success in solving an environmental issue. This award recognizes those organizations that have been actively educating people in their community about litter prevention, community beautification, or reducing/eliminating the causes of a local environmental problem. It is given in memory of Margaret Jones, the first executive director of the Keep Maryland Beautiful Program.

The Bill James Environmental Grants of up to $1,000 are awarded to school groups, science and ecology clubs, and other nonprofit youth groups for proposed environmental education projects. The grants are given in memory of William S. James, who drafted legislation to create MET, incorporating the activities of the Governor’s Committee to Keep Maryland Beautiful.

The objectives of the grants are to: encourage a sense of stewardship and personal responsibility for the environment; stimulate a better understanding of environmental issues; help reduce or eliminate a local environmental problem; and encourage education about growth management and protection of rural areas and sensitive resources while discouraging sprawl development.

For an application or more information, visit dnr.maryland.gov/met/grant_programs.asp Completed applications must be received by March 31, 2015.

The Maryland State Highway Administration provides partial funding annually for these grants and awards. The Maryland General Assembly established the Maryland Environmental Trust in 1967, and Keep Maryland Beautiful was created later that same year as MET’s first program. MET promotes the protection of open land through its Land Conservation, Stewardship and Local Land Trust Assistance programs.

The Maryland Environmental Trust currently holds more than 1,070 easements totaling approximately 131,000 acres in Maryland. Governed by a citizen board of trustees, MET is affiliated with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and promotes the permanent protection of land through its Conservation Easement, Stewardship and Land Trust Assistance Programs. Learn more at dnr.maryland.gov/met.