The effort which came to be called GAIA* Initiative for Earth-Human Balance began in 2018 as a series of issue-inquiries assisted by students from our local Davidson College. The question asked was: Were there topics that could be investigated with modest grant support to increase awareness of various environmental threats posed by rapidly expanding human populations?
In 2020 the formal GAIA Initiative grants program was begun. Interest was solicited from established non-profit organizations who presented innovative exploratory proposals on a broad range of education projects that would support moderation of family size and other issues which encouraged thoughtful birth choice.
The operational goal for 2021 was to develop a comprehensive grants program – which would provide an ongoing infrastructure for goal/priority setting, soliciting interest from organizations, processing and evaluating grant applications, quarterly project monitoring, end-of-project impact assessment, and financial accountability. Our GAIA grants are intended to provide support for education and interventions related to reproductive health, while also fostering women’s birth choice autonomy.
The Spring 2022 grant cycle broadened our focus beyond the high population-growth nations of the Global South to include the near term threats from the damaging greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) of Global North nations with their extremely high per capita GGE and high levels of consumption associated with their robust national economic development. There would now be a parallel set of funding priorities – for Global North and Global South projects – in order to recognize the quite different challenges in the two regions.
The number of GAIA grants has been increased to 32 per year – 16 for projects in the Global South and 16 for Global North. A corporate reorganization was initiated and the new IRS-approved non-profit GAIA private foundation now supplements the funding available through our GAIA education charity (see Financial Accountability for our most recent annual expense report).
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To learn more about the GAIA grants organization, the organizations receiving grant awards, and the purposes of their funded projects – we invite you to review this website information:
Recent Funded Projects: a listing of grantees, summary descriptions of their projects, to which of these primary purpose categories they were assigned:
- International Public Policy;
- Reproductive Health/Family Planning (RH/FP) Education;
- Teen Media RH/FP Education;
- Women’s RH/FP Education;
- Cultural Challenge/ Women’s Birth Choice Autonomy;
- RH/FP Medical Education.
Our Team Members: the people who direct and administer the GAIA Grants Program.
Financial Accountability: FY 2021 corporate funds distribution.
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GAIA Initiative 