Funding Opportunity: Environmental Literacy for Community Resilience

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Gulf Research Program is partnering with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Environmental Literacy Program on a funding program to use place-based education to enhance community resilience and increase environmental literacy among residents of the U.S. Gulf States. The Environmental Literacy for Community Resilience program will support projects that educate community members on local environmental challenges, engage learners in solutions-oriented activities, and empower citizens to participate.

Specifically, this funding opportunity seeks applications that engage learners in place-based activities that empower participants to contribute to local resilience efforts informed by a local understanding of socio-environmental challenges. Competitive applications should be tailored to community needs and contexts, incorporate scientific information and best practices in education, enable participants to take action in their community, and empower future leaders to help address the complex environmental challenges facing the Gulf States now and into the future.

According to the Request for Applications:

Projects should use evidence-based educational approaches to engage project participants with locally relevant, place-based activities that are designed to increase community-level environmental literacy. Projects should be tailored to community needs and contexts, incorporate scientific information and best practices in education, enable participants to take action in their community, and empower current and future leaders to help address complex environmental challenges. Particular attention should be paid to communities that have greater exposure to, and fewer resources to deal with environmental challenges.

Projects are strongly encouraged to develop and advance meaningful partnerships with community-based organizations (CBOs) from the communities supported by the project. Projects should be co-designed with CBO partners. CBO partners should be involved in project implementation as well as included in project leadership or as advisors.

The program supports projects that will target the Gulf States of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

A total of $4 million is available for this funding opportunity. Applicants must request between $100,000 and $750,000 for projects, commensurate with the scope of work, that are between 12 and 36 months in duration. Awardees will be notified in August 2025 for funding to start October 1, 2025.

Eligible applicants include institutions of higher education, K-12 schools and school systems, and non-profit community-based organizations and informal education institutions—such as museums, zoos, and aquariums.

Applications are now open and will close at 5:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, May 21, 2025. Apply through the Gulf Research Project grants application system.

Additional Information:

• Funding Opportunity: Environmental Literacy for Community Resilience
• Request for Applications