The Sustainable Initiative Grant Committee is seeking applications for the Sustainable Initiative Grant (SIG). Formerly known as the GreenFund, SIG provides one-time grants of up to $2,000 to members of the Lehigh community who want to pilot innovative and scalable ideas to create a greener, more sustainable campus.
Previous initiatives that received the grant include the establishment of Lehigh’s Beekeeping Club in 2014 and the purchase and installation of the “Bee Cam”, which is a live feed camera for the bee hives on Mountaintop Campus. The Beekeeping Club is still active today as an experiential learning club that teaches students to be beekeepers and works to raise awareness about the important role of honeybees in environmental sustainability. The club keeps over 20,000 bees on the Goodman Campus which are kept by the 12 committed members of the club.
More recently, SIG has funded “a project to create green spaces within Lehigh's libraries which has the goal of reducing student stress, a project to install natural pest-deterrents in the Southside Permaculture Park, and a project to build a kiln that cures lumber for re-use on campus,” Erin Karahuta, Ph.D., CIP said. Karahuta is a Research Integrity Manager in the Office of Research Integrity and a member of the Lehigh Sustainability Council's Culture and Engagement Committee that manages SIG.
If you’re interested in applying for a grant, but intimidated by the application process, the SIG Committee encourages you not to be! Whether a simple or complex sustainable initiative, the application process is designed to be a guide for helping you to explain your project, timeline, budget, duration, and the team of collaborators that will be involved in the initiative.
“The SIG grant's requirements are open-ended and flexible, allowing students to explore exciting ways to make the campus more sustainable. We are consistently impressed by students' creative approaches to sustainability”, Karahuta said.
Visit this link for tips on applying for and obtaining a Sustainable Initiative Grant. Learn more about the SIG and begin your application today!
