Funding Partners
Our project was selected for the 2014 Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund along with about 100 other projects worldwide! Find out more here.
As a first-generation student, Bill & Melinda Gates have made access to higher education a possibility for me, and are fully funding my education here at Cornell - incredible.
The SBF is awarded to a limited number of students each year at Cornell who study biodiversity.
The Athena Fund through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology funds graduate student research, providing students with the chance to jump-start or continue their exciting research.
Through the College of Agriculture and Life Science Alumni Association, mini-grants allow students to pursue enrichment opportunities.
Through the Einaudi International Travel Grant Program, dozens of Cornell students have their plane tickets funded for academic research.
Guatemala Partners
Community Cloud Forest Conservation
Community Cloud Forest Conservation alleviates poverty and protects cloud forests through education, reforestation, community development, academic scholarships, and ecological improvements to agriculture. CCFC believes that holistic human / community development through education and capacity building is the key to peace building in Guatemala's Central Highlands. Community-based conservation gives peasant farmers ownership and incentive for good land stewardship.
Student Research Partners
Lilly Briggs is a PhD student at Cornell University. She studies CCFC's, "Women in Agroecology Leadership for Conservation" or "WALC," a leadership training program which provides young women scholarships to attend school past 6th grade upon completion of an intensive 25 day program, as well as the confidence and skills to become leaders in their communities. These students study environmental education, agroecology, confidence building, and more! Lilly's research is trying to determine how this program effects sense of place in these young women's lives, and in their families lives.
Ian Pope, a Borlaug Scholar from Purdue University, studies sustainable agriculture in the Guatemalan cloud forests where he investigates the role of deforestation, land tenure, soil erosion, and sustainable farming practices in decision-making in agriculture. He creates maps using GIS to help CCFC identify priority areas for forest conservation and agroecological enrichments to soils.