2012 Wildlife Conservation Youth Engagement Grants

Wildlife and their habitats are not just located in the woods or forested areas—they are in the trees in your backyard, the shrubs around your school building and everywhere else. Whether you’re in a city, rural area or a suburb, wildlife conservation issues exist all around us—and so do opportunities to address these issues.

Educators, here’s your chance to make a difference! Do you know of a 14-19 year-old high school student with a creative idea for conserving and protecting wildlife and its habitat in your community? Encourage them to apply for a national Planet Connect Youth Engagement Grant! Planet Connect is offering high school students grants of $1,000 to implement their problem-solving projects and participate in a local internship focused on wildlife conservation.

In the application, your students will be asked to create a timeline for implementing their project, as well as a detailed budget, describing how they will tackle the problem, what tools they will use, who they will work with, and what positive outcomes they foresee. If one of your students is chosen as a winner, they will be provided $500.00 to turn their project idea into reality. After completing their project in June, your student will participate in an 80-hour wildlife conservation or natural resource internship in your local community during the summer of 2012. At the end of the internship your student will be awarded a $500.00 stipend.

Want to provide your students with some help brainstorming project ideas? Have them check out the grant projects and internship summaries from the 2011 student grantees here: http://planetconnect.org/2011grantwinners

Visit http://planetconnect.org/2012wcgrants to learn more and to watch the grant promo video. Applications are due by February 1, 2012!