All News Releases By Date

Girls’ Club of Allentown Receives $5,000 Environmental Education Grant from EPA

Release Date: 9/26/2001
Contact Information: Donna Heron, (215) 814-5113

Donna Heron, (215) 814-5113

PHILADELPHIA - The Girls’ Club of Allentown, Inc. received a $5,000 environmental education grant to teach 125 inner city girls, ages 5 to 18, about urban ecosystems.

The program, entitled “We Care,” will use the club’s already established urban community garden on Turner Street as the classroom, and the girls will discover the ways that plants, animals and other elements of our environment are all linked together. They will also learn how toxins are introduced into water systems, safe alternatives to pesticides and public health hazards caused by pollution.

Two eight-week sessions will be offered. The first will begin this fall, the second will be presented during spring, 2002.

“The Girls’ Club of Allentown is to be commended for helping their club members learn the connectedness of all living things through their successful community garden. EPA is proud to have helped create the garden in 1997 through a previous environmental education grant,” said Donald S. Welsh, administrator of EPA’s mid- Atlantic region.

EPA’s education grant program is designed to stimulate grass-roots environmental education. In the mid-Atlantic region - which includes Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia - the 22 grant recipients included schools, civic groups and non-profit organizations. Nationally, $2 million was awarded in 2001.

For more information on this grant, contact Kim Scalia at (215) 814-5421. EPA’s regional Internet home page also has general information on the grants: https://www.epa.gov/region03.