Big news: Adventure Crew awarded $1 million from the bi3 Fund

This has been the hardest secret to keep. But today, we can finally share it! Here goes:

Adventure Crew has been awarded a $1,000,000 grant from the bi3 Fund — one of the region's most competitive health and wellbeing funders — to launch the Renewal Project. This three-year initiative will allow us to renovate a vacant two-story apartment building at our Community Conservation Hub campus in the lower Fairview neighborhood of Clifton into a permanent, youth-designed nature and conservation center.

This has been years in the making. Our teens told us they wanted a place of their own, somewhere to gather, lead and grow. A place rooted in nature, community and belonging. The Renewal Project is our answer. 

The center will be co-designed from the ground up, with our Youth Leadership Team leading research among their peers, graduates and the broader Adventure Crew community to ensure every voice shapes what this space becomes. It will expand paid leadership pathways; launch a mentorship program connecting teens with supportive adult mentors; and deepen our environmental education programming, all in a permanent home built to grow with our community. (Crew teens will choose a permanent name for the campus; stay tuned!)

None of this would be possible without an extraordinary group of partners: property owner Tony Sansalone, whose generosity and deep roots in this neighborhood made the campus possible; Cardinal Land Conservancy, who will hold the land in perpetuity and has committed to sustaining paid conservation internships for Adventure Crew graduates well beyond the grant term; Youth Participatory Action Research facilitators Dr. Heather Gerker and Dr. Alicia Boards; We Outside; Civic Garden Center; Queen City Pollinator Project; and Full Circle Expeditions.

More details ahead. For now — thank you to everyone who believed in this vision alongside us, most especially the team at bi3, whose trust-based approach to philanthropy means showing up as a genuine partner, not just a funder. Our region is far better for it.

With gratitude, Libby