Building on its success with SHARE San Francisco, Shareable is supporting the broadening of the sharing movement through a seed grant and technical assistance program for new, youth-led, sharing projects. We put out the call for applications in late January and after great efforts to outreach and leave no stone unturned, we received 144 applications by mid-February. Shareable reviewed the projects over several days. After screening the finalists, we made some very tough decisions and selected 13 winners. We wish we could have funded them all.
To our surprise, there were an unusual proportion of project proposals involving food and skillshares. We were also inspired by the creative diversity that sharing can encompass – from an Occupy tool library for rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy to a program to use underutilized commercial kitchen space for food start-ups in Detroit, called Foodlab Detroit. Other cool runner up projects included a worker coop curriculum through TESA and Cooperation Texas, a childcare collective conference to support activist parents and an online Library of Stuff in Turkey. Shareable will be offering media support to all applicants.
The projects awarded seed grants will be submitting blog posts with photos when their projects are completed so stay tuned.
And here are the winners!
- University of Michigan Soup community crowdfunding dinner
- Community-wide free store at Green Week on the campus of Ohio Wesleyan University
- Sharing Economy Conference for Ann Arbor, MI
- Series of “Share Fairs” through the Chicago Time Exchange
- Free skool and popular education center by the Experimental College (EXCO) of the Twin Cities
- Seed bank for Chicago gardeners by Pilsen Environmental Rights & Reform Organization
- Series of skillshares and swap meets to kick off the Cleveland Timebank
- Sharing economy conference coordinated by the Boulder Housing Coalition
- Clothing swaps in Turkey by Giysi Takasi
- Book swap with elementary school students by Everybody Wins! Iowa through Drake University
- Food coop and healthy eating outreach events for the Bushwick Food Coop in Brooklyn
- Bike lending library by Fender Bender community bike shop in Detroit
-
Trainings to expand the Boulder Food Rescue model to other cities and campuses
