$1,000 Grant for Friends of Bellemeade Park

Congratulations to today’s award of our 2021 Green Grants: Friends of Bellemeade Park, in Richmond, will receive a grant award of $1000 for its Litter Prevention project! We’ll be announcing one Green Grants award each day during the month of June. 

Friends of Bellemeade Park was formed to develop a piece of land adjoining Bellemeade Elementary School into a viable outdoor space for the children of the school and surrounding community. The six-acre park had been overgrown, a dumping ground for household furnishings and tires, and was bisected by a creek full of trash and assorted debris. Friends of Bellemeade Park cleaned up the area and now plans to establish a learning campus with programming to provide hands-on environmental education for the children and community.

Friends of Bellemeade Park will use their grant funds to install a stream buffer to manage erosion and litter in the creek, as well as wheelbarrows, litter grabbers, and other supplies and tools for volunteers to use during cleanups.

Every year, government, non-profit, civic and service organizations in Virginia were invited to apply for grants for $500 to $1,000 describing how they plan to tackle an environmental concern in their community regarding Litter Prevention, Recycling, Cigarette Litter Prevention, or Community Beautification.  Since 2011, Keep Virginia Beautiful has provided $254,500 for 320 different environmental programs and projects all across the Commonwealth, due to the generosity of their partnership with Altria, as well as additional support from Coca-Cola, WestRock and Keep America Beautiful.