Grantees

The Bristol Recreation Department creates opportunities for families and children to enjoy Bristol, explore new interests, get outdoors and learn new skills. The role as a Recreation Department is to improve the quality of life for community members and make Bristol a better place to live. With this grant BRD is expanding our Mountain bike library, a resource that provides access to free, quality, maintained bikes for the community - both child and adults.

To purchase musical instruments

Highgate Library and Community Center is creating a music garden for all ages to take part in and enjoy in the library backyard. This music garden will contain outdoor musical instrument equipment stations to encourage musical creativity and rhythm and sound education for children and families within the community of Highgate. It will develop and foster a love of music from a young age and will provide social connections for community members.

To purchase equipment to finish their playground renovation .

In order to secure a reliable mass copier, color printer and scanner in order to increase awareness of our program and be able toe xhibit student's work.

ONE Arts is on a mission to facilitate and coordinate unique and significant art experiences in our local community (Chittenden County) and to build a larger creative community of all ages. Our art center provides daily after school programs and creative camps for elementary ages and middle school in the Old North End of Burlington, while our two early learning locations serve ages 0-5 and their families. We need a new gate to keep the toddlers from leaving the classroom, specifically in our gross motor space. We used a baby gate system, but unfortunately the gate broke, pulling out of the wall. We currently have a couch blocking the exit but this is not a sustainable long-term solution. We are looking forward to replacing the broken gate with a higher quality, safer gate and having it installed by our handyperson. With the $2,000 from the Vermont Children's Trust Foundation, we will be able to install a high quality safety gate, long enough and strong enough to create a barrier to the exit door and specifically made for children that is ADA compliant. Installing a new gate will help us control exits more safely and securely.

The grant will assist in acquiring laptops, which will be available for use by students, instructors, parents, and families of participants of ONWARD!. The laptops will benefit the program by providing access to online services, research, teaching and learning materials, as well as to provide a technology component to the afterschool program.

In 2018, the Randolph Early Childhood Education Task Force, a group of volunteers of the Randolph Reenergized Economic Development Task Force (R3 Task Force) formed and focused on increasing affordable access to high-quality childcare services in Randolph and eight surrounding towns. In continuation of that effort, in 2020, the Town of Randolph did a survey for economic development future goals. The top response that resulted from that survey was the need for childcare with a 80-90 infant to pre-school capacity. The Randolph Early Childhood Task Force, through a Community Development Grant from the Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD), hired a consultant to do a needs assessment across nine towns in Orange and Windham counties. They also assessed potential sites for a Randolph childcare center. According to a January 2020 report, it was determined that Orange County as a whole needed an additional 288 infant spots, 93 toddler spots and 213 preschooler spots to meet current and future demand. In 2022, a collaboration between White River Junction-based Green Mountain Economic Development Corp (GMEDC) and OCPCC allowed the project to move forward and for GMEDC to purchase the roughly 10,700-square-foot building at 1538 Vermont Route 66 in Randolph to renovate and house the childcare program, while the Tunbridge-based OCPCC was designated to run the program. Proposed to serve between 80 and 90 children, ranging from infants to preschoolers, it was scheduled to open in the Summer of 2022 at a cost of about $3M. Due to delays and increasing construction costs after the COVID19 pandemic, the center is now scheduled to begin renovations in late summer 2024 and begin serving children in July 2025.