This spring, 23 congregations of the diocese were awarded a combined total of $174,392 in
Gretchen Umholtz
The Rev. Moses Sowale of Grace Chapel in Brockton helps plant a garden of native flowers to beautify a busy city corner. The garden received a Simple Acts Grant last year.
Green Improvement Grants. These grants represent the first disbursements of funds from the ongoing diocesan Together Now fundraising campaign's $2-million Creation Care Initiative.
The grants will help congregations--from Acton and Andover to Gloucester and Lowell to Wakefield and Waltham--make lighting and appliance conversions, replace windows, install insulation and improve inefficient heating systems.
An additional $3,980 was awarded in Simple Acts Grants for projects that include a vacation garden school at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Watertown and a recycling project by the Episcopal Boston Chinese Ministry.
(The full list of grants, as of June 19, 2012, is attached below as a PDF.)
"These grants and those that follow will allow congregations to dream about how their church buildings and spaces speak to their community and can reflect the glorious beauty and bounty of God--and then take real, practical steps to bring those dreams into being," the Rev. Karen Montagno, Director of Congregational Resources and Training, said in the June Together Now Campaign Update newsletter.
The Creation Care Initiative (first known as the Green Grants Initiative when it was launched in 2010) exists to encourage, challenge and support all the congregations of the diocese as they carry out their responsibility to care for God's creation.