Tomorrow’s Forest Communities: the grant program begins its third edition: grants between 3,000 and 30,000 Euros

Tomorrow’s Forest Foundation announces the opening of a new round of the non-refundable grants programme. For the year 2024, the available budget is 150,000 Euros, and grants can reach up to 30,000 Euros for a project. The deadline for projects submissions is March 31.

The third edition of the Tomorrow’s Forest Communities grant program begins on February 1, 2024. The program aims to stimulate the sustainable development of communities that depend on forests in Romania.

“In our view, the healthiest forests are managed by prosperous communities, in step with new technologies in the field of forestry and environmental protection,” explains Mihail Caradaică, executive director of the Tomorrow’s Forest Foundation. “These grants are an important incentive for community actors – NGOs, institutions, social enterprises and so on – to realize that solutions with real impact can be found in every community and can be put to work quickly.”

In the first two rounds of the program (2022-2023), 10 projects were contracted, with a total amount of funding granted of 2,359,820 lei. The admitted projects are currently in various phases of implementation in Argeș, Bacău, Brașov, Buzău, Cluj, Harghita and Satu-Mare counties. These include areas such as education, social economy, developments that value community forests and the services they provide, and of course afforestation and reforestation.

The total budget available for this year is 150,000 Euros, and individual projects can receive funding between 3,000 and 30,000 Euros. The co-financing of the projects provided by the beneficiaries is scored additionally, but is not mandatory.

Projects can be submitted until March 31, 2024. Their evaluation will be done by professional and independent evaluators, according to the program strategy and the code of conduct, between April 1 and May 31, 2024, and the results will be announced on June 15.

More information, the Applicant’s Guide and the funding request model are available on the Pădurea de Maine Foundation website, at www.padureademaine.ro/comunitati. The Foundation’s executive director and project manager will provide more details and answer questions in a Zoom webinar on March 1 at 7:00 p.m.