Yulia Honyshnuk has spent years tending to the library of Haliivka, a small rural village in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine. For most people, a village library might suggest quiet shelves, aging volumes, and the occasional solitary reader. For Yulia, it represented something far more urgent: a potential lifeline for a community navigating war, displacement, and isolation. Her vision was to transform that space, to make it a living, breathing hub where children, elderly residents, youth, and internally displaced persons could find not just books, but belonging.

That vision became reality thanks to a seed grant from The Pollination Project.

“This is a wonderful project that gave us the opportunity to turn our aspirations into reality. For our community, this initiative created a chance to strengthen and consolidate our efforts while revitalizing cultural life in a small Ukrainian community.” — Yulia Honyshnuk

With approximately $490 in TPP funding, Yulia and her team made a series of targeted, strategic purchases that reshaped what the library could offer its community. A Samsung Smart TV and a TP-Link router brought connectivity and screen-based programming into a space that had none. Rechargeable LED lamps ensured that activities could continue even during the prolonged power outages that regularly disrupted life in the region. Board games, craft supplies, paper, scissors, and creative tools filled the shelves alongside the books, signaling to every visitor that this was now a place for doing, not just reading. These were modest investments with outsized returns.

Across the grant period, Yulia and her team organized more than 15 events, directly impacting 190 people. A youth leisure club now meets three times a week, creating consistent, reliable programming for young people. A reading club of approximately 8 regular members gathers monthly to discuss new literary works. A cybersecurity and cyberbullying training held in partnership with CrimeaSOS and Right to Protection reached more than 30 students, and over 20 requests from socially vulnerable residents were addressed through accessibility and mental health support activities. The physical transformation of the library had triggered a social one, and the numbers proved it.

None of this came easily. The implementation of the project unfolded against a backdrop of prolonged power outages, unstable heating, interrupted internet access, and an uncertain security situation that required constant flexibility. Planned events were postponed, locations were changed, and formats were adapted again and again.

“These challenges also taught us to be flexible, responsive, and better prepared for unexpected situations while continuing to provide meaningful activities for the community.” — Yulia Honyshnuk

That adaptability, cultivated under pressure, is itself one of the project’s lasting outcomes. The team that emerged from this experience is more capable, more resilient, and more organizationally equipped for whatever comes next.

Philanthropic seed funding works precisely because of moments like this one: a single, focused investment that activates community energy already waiting to be channeled. The Pollination Project’s Daily Grant Program, designed to support grassroots changemakers with small but meaningful grants, found in Yulia a grantee who stretched every dollar into durable social impact.

The library of Haliivka is no longer simply a repository for books. Under Yulia’s leadership and with TPP’s support, it has become a cultural and educational hub, a safe space for youth, a gathering point for the elderly, a welcoming environment for displaced persons, and an anchor of community life in a village that needed exactly that.

“Library services have become more accessible, open, modern, and interactive. Therefore, it is extremely important for us to continue changing the world around us through cultural diversity and active community engagement.” — Yulia Honyshnuk

The work continues. Encouraged by the success of this first phase and supported by an additional $1,000 grant awarded as a result of their demonstrated impact, Yulia and her team are committed to expanding programming, deepening community partnerships, and strengthening the library’s role as a civic institution. The foundation has been laid, the community has responded, and the seeds planted by The Pollination Project are already taking root.

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Yesterday, the world marked Menstrual Hygiene Day, a global call to end the stigma and silence that still surround menstruation. But for Leonce Hirwa, a 25 year old medical student from Rwanda, this fight started long before any international awareness campaign. It started in the classrooms of his childhood, where empty seats told a story no one was willing to say out loud.

As a boy growing up in Rwanda, Leonce watched girls disappear from school for days every month. Some used rags. Others simply stayed home, weighed down by shame. No one talked about it. Years later, during his clinical rotations as a medical student, the same silence followed him into examination rooms. “I feel dirty when I bleed,” a young girl told him. That single sentence changed the course of his work. “No one should feel ashamed of something so natural,” Leonce says. “This project is my response, to educate, uplift, and restore dignity.”

That response became The Pride in Periods Initiative, a grassroots menstrual health education program that brought reusable sanitary pads and life changing knowledge to schoolgirls across Nyamagabe District. And a seed grant from The Pollination Project’s Daily Grant Program gave it the resources to begin.

With $500 from The Pollination Project, Leonce and a team of medical student volunteers set out to visit a handful of schools. They ended up reaching 12: G.S Uwinkomo, G.S Murico, G.S Gikongoro, EP Ruganza, EP Muse, G.S Gasaka, G.S Kigeme, G.S Munini, G.S Mbazi, G.S Kitabi, G.S Kinyana, G.S Kibumbwe, and G.S Kiyumba.

The grant funded soft cotton fabric and waterproof lining for reusable hygiene pads, sewing materials, menstrual health workshop handouts and printed awareness brochures, handwashing soap, hand sanitizer, chalk markers and flipcharts for teaching, local transportation for volunteer outreach visits, and internet bundles for project coordination. Every dollar was stretched with intention, and every franc went directly toward activities that put girls at the center.

The impact numbers speak for themselves:

• 4,800 girls received menstrual health education
• 3,600 boys were trained to understand and support their classmates
• 50 teachers were equipped to continue menstrual health conversations in classrooms
• 450 reusable sanitary pads were distributed to girls who had none
• 12 schools across Nyamagabe District were reached
• 8,450 people directly impacted in total
• 200 volunteer hours contributed by medical student volunteers

The Pride in Periods Initiative was designed around a simple but powerful idea: ending period stigma requires everyone. Medical student volunteers led peer to peer workshops that taught girls how to manage their periods safely, how to make and care for reusable pads, and how their bodies work. But the program did not stop with girls. Boys attended parallel sessions where they learned about menstruation, challenged teasing behaviors, and committed to supporting their female classmates. Teachers received separate training so that the lessons would continue long after the volunteers left.

“Boys told us they would stop teasing classmates about periods,” Leonce shared. “Teachers now continue the lessons on their own. Most importantly, school attendance among girls has started to improve.”

Pre and post workshop quizzes confirmed what volunteers could already see: knowledge scores improved significantly across all 12 schools. Girls knew more about hygiene, pad use, and their own bodies. In feedback sessions, they said they felt less ashamed and more confident. Many asked questions about menstruation openly for the first time in their lives.

The road to 12 schools was not smooth. Heavy rains turned roads to mud, forcing volunteers to walk long distances or ride motorbikes on slippery paths. Taking photographs proved difficult due to poor lighting in crowded classrooms, and some girls were understandably shy about being photographed near menstrual products. The team navigated these challenges with patience, always asking for consent and waiting for the right moments.

Despite these obstacles, every planned activity was completed successfully, a testament to the determination of a volunteer team that believed deeply in the mission.

The initiative caught the attention of MEDSAR, the Medical Student Association of Rwanda. Recognizing the value of the project, MEDSAR contributed additional funding that covered transport tickets for volunteers traveling to all 12 schools and helped purchase more reusable sanitary pads. This endorsement from Rwanda’s national medical student community signaled that the initiative resonated far beyond Nyamagabe District.

“MEDSAR’s support is a form of recognition from Rwanda’s young health leaders,” Leonce explains. “It shows that others believe in this work.”

The Pride in Periods Initiative has already exceeded its original goals, reaching over 20 times the number of girls initially promised. But Leonce sees this as just the beginning. The next steps include follow up visits to the 50 trained teachers to check on progress three months after the workshops, fundraising to distribute more reusable pads because 450 were not enough, and expansion into two additional districts in Rwanda.

“We have seen that this model works,” Leonce says. “Educate girls, include boys and teachers, provide pads, and break shame. With more support, we can reach thousands more.”

The Pollination Project’s seed grant did more than fund materials. It offered something rarer: trust in a young medical student with a vision. “TPP did not just give money,” Leonce reflects. “You trusted a young medical student with a big dream. That trust made us work harder and go further. We promised 400 girls. We reached 8,450 people. We learned that even small resources, when used with heart, can change a community.”

As the echoes of Menstrual Hygiene Day continue to ripple across the globe, The Pride in Periods Initiative stands as proof that compassion, paired with even modest philanthropic investment, can transform the lives of thousands. In rural Rwanda, girls are walking back into classrooms with confidence, boys are standing beside them as allies, and teachers are carrying the conversation forward. Dignity has taken root, and it is growing.

Have a project like this?
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John Nyabwari Nyambane Jr. grew up watching drought devastate farming families across Kenya’s semi-arid regions, a cycle of hunger, livestock loss, and dependency that repeated itself with increasing severity each year. Rather than accept this as inevitable, he chose to reimagine what food security could look like for the communities most affected. A trained sociologist with a Master of Arts in Sociology and Community Development from the University of Nairobi and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Nyambane channeled his academic background and deep community roots into founding Ethical Transformation Impact (ETI), an organization dedicated to empowering ultra-poor smallholder households to transition toward climate-resilient, plant-based food systems.

His vision was clear: replace dependence on vulnerable livestock-based livelihoods with indigenous, drought-resistant, protein-dense crops like green grams, while equipping communities with the agroecological knowledge and entrepreneurial tools to sustain the shift on their own terms.

A seed grant from The Pollination Project arrived at a pivotal moment, turning what had been a well-researched concept into a fully operational initiative. The grant funded the formal registration of ETI as a nonprofit organization in Kenya, a critical first step that gave the project legal standing and institutional credibility. It also covered the purchase of a manual grinder for small-scale food processing, venue hire for community food demonstrations, printing of educational materials including posters and booklets, transportation to reach remote households, field engagement with farming communities, training materials on agroecology, nutrition, and entrepreneurship, snacks for community gatherings, and essential administrative expenses.

With these resources in place, Nyambane and his team trained 30 rural women farmers in Tharaka Nithi County in agroecological practices and plant-based farming techniques, helping them transition away from livestock-dependent production. These women, many of them from ultra-poor households, learned to cultivate indigenous protein-rich crops using sustainable methods suited to their drought-prone environment. Consultative meetings and hands-on planting sessions strengthened local participation and built a sense of community ownership that extended well beyond the training itself. The initiative also partnered with Ethical Seafood Research, a fellow Pollination Project grantee, to train 246 fish farmers using the FAI digital welfare platform, significantly expanding the project’s reach into animal welfare practices. Altogether, the project directly reached 297 people and impacted an estimated 123,000 animals, while generating $500 in project income and mobilizing 7,800 volunteer hours.

“The seed funding served as a catalyst that transformed a concept into a functioning initiative with measurable impact,” Nyambane shared. “Through this grant, we were able not only to implement the Tharaka Alternative Protein Initiative but also to establish Ethical Transformation Impact as a platform capable of scaling plant-based, climate-smart, and animal-friendly solutions across Kenya.”

In parallel with the rural farming initiative, ETI launched the Nairobi Just Food Systems Leadership Program, a six-week plant-based leadership curriculum delivered in partnership with New Roots Institute. The program trained 21 university students from 11 universities across Kenya, equipping young leaders to advocate for plant-forward diets and institutional food change within their campuses and communities. The program seeded a new generation of advocates who understand the intersections between food justice, climate resilience, animal welfare, and public health.

Nyambane also secured seed support from Vegan Hub Africa, which provided seeds valued at approximately KSh 5,000 ($38) for farmer production, and introduced the Youth Changemakers Club to Kenya through a partnership with Living Kind, further extending the initiative’s educational footprint among young people.

The impact of this grassroots philanthropy effort did not go unnoticed. ETI’s work was featured in the BRICS G20 magazine in a special edition article titled “Sowing Seeds of Sovereignty: How the BRICS Can Empower Rural Communities Through Sustainable Agriculture,” as well as by Kenya’s Standard Media Group, bringing national and international visibility to the plant-based food systems movement emerging from Tharaka Nithi County.

“The support from TPP strengthened our credibility, enabled strategic partnerships, and positioned our organization for long-term sustainability and expansion,” Nyambane reflected.

Looking ahead, Nyambane plans to launch the Decolonizing Diets Campus Fellowship, building on the momentum of the pilot university program. The fellowship will train 30 university students as plant-based and animal welfare advocates, expand outreach to five to ten campuses, and support fellows with mentorship, training resources, and small project funding for advocacy campaigns encouraging plant-based diets and institutional food shifts. The Tharaka Alternative Protein Initiative will continue as a rural demonstration hub for sustainable agriculture, while new partnerships with universities, nutrition experts, and advocacy organizations deepen the project’s reach.

“We are deeply grateful to TPP for believing in our vision at an early stage,” Nyambane said. “We remain committed to maximizing the impact of this investment and look forward to building on this foundation through continued collaboration.”

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Aime Ishimwe knows what it feels like to navigate the path to higher education without a guide. Growing up in rural Rwanda, he experienced firsthand the barriers that keep talented students from reaching their full potential: limited career guidance, no exposure to role models, and almost no access to scholarship information. That lived experience became the foundation for Career Compass, a student-led initiative he created to ensure that other young people in Huye District would never have to face those barriers alone.

“Career Compass is deeply personal. It is built from lived experience,” Aime shared. “This project is my way of giving back and ensuring that other students do not face the same barriers alone.”

With a seed grant from The Pollination Project’s Daily Grant Program, Aime turned that personal conviction into structured, measurable community impact across three rural secondary schools.

The TPP grant provided the essential startup resources Career Compass needed to reach students across Huye District. The funding supported a reusable banner, workshop toolkits including papers, markers, and posters, internet bundles for mentors, and airtime for coordination. Every franc was directed toward activities that brought university student mentors into rural classrooms for career guidance sessions, mentorship workshops, and scholarship preparation support.

The results have been significant. Career Compass has directly reached 1,756 students through in-person career guidance and mentorship sessions across three partner schools: G.S. Murambi (580 students), GS Officiel de Butare (620 students), and G.S des Parents TSS Butare (556 students). The project has also conducted 5 targeted mentorship sessions for 246 national exam candidates in S3 and S6, focusing on effective study strategies, self-awareness, career exploration, and exposure to future opportunities. Volunteers have contributed 87 hours of their time to make these sessions possible.

“Access to information is as important as access to financial support,” Aime reflected. “Many students have the potential to succeed but lack exposure, guidance, and the confidence to pursue opportunities.”

Beyond the sessions themselves, Career Compass has created infrastructure designed to outlast any single grant cycle. The project launched 2 student-led Career Clubs, with 25 and 20 founding members respectively, that meet weekly for peer learning, mentorship, and career discussions. These clubs ensure that the work continues even when university mentors are not physically present in the schools.

A key milestone has been the development of a College Application Handbook, created with the support of an international volunteer. This resource provides step-by-step guidance on university applications, scholarship opportunities, and preparation strategies, addressing a critical information gap that rural students across Rwanda face every year. Pre- and post-session feedback revealed that many students reported increased clarity about subject combinations, future careers, and available opportunities after participating in Career Compass activities.

Teachers and school leaders observed changes in student motivation and classroom participation, confirming that the impact extended well beyond the sessions themselves.

The path has not been without obstacles. Some rural school leaders had limited awareness of the value of structured career guidance, making it difficult to secure time within school schedules. Aligning the availability of university student volunteers with secondary school calendars proved challenging, as many mentors are full-time students themselves. And in schools where mentorship was being introduced for the first time, allocated sessions were often too short to address every student’s questions.

Aime and his team adapted by strengthening communication with school leaders, planning sessions further in advance, and maximizing every minute of available time during visits. So far, Career Compass has secured partnerships with 3 of its target 5 schools.

Career Compass is preparing to expand to two additional rural schools in Huye District by the end of 2026. The next major phase includes the launch of college application and scholarship bootcamps scheduled for July 2026, immediately following national examinations. These bootcamps will offer practical, step-by-step support including guidance on selecting universities, preparing application documents, writing personal statements, and identifying scholarship opportunities, with special attention to students who have limited access to digital resources.

The project aims to support at least 150 students in securing scholarships and reach over 2,500 students total by year’s end.

“The grant, though small, has had a practical impact by supporting essential resources that made our activities possible,” Aime wrote in his report to The Pollination Project. “It has shown that even limited funding, when used intentionally, can create real change at the community level.”

This is what grassroots philanthropy looks like when it trusts the right person. A seed grant. A clear vision. And 1,756 young people who now see a future they could not see before.

Have a project like this?
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We are thrilled to welcome Samanta Fabbris as the newest grantee of The Pollination Project. Her work sits at a crucial intersection: supporting the City of Rio de Janeiro in revising its Sustainable Development and Climate Action Plan (PSD), with a particular focus on integrating food systems into the city’s climate framework.

“My grant aims to support the City of Rio de Janeiro in revising its Sustainable Development and Climate Action Plan (PSD), with a focus on integrating food systems into the framework. This is an important step in recognizing the interconnection between food and climate as essential for both adaptation and mitigation of the climate crisis. So far, I have conducted an initial analysis of the current plan and helped design a workshop with civil society, engaging more than 80 participants to ensure that the diverse voices of Rio are reflected in this new chapter. It has been truly rewarding to carry out this work in partnership with TPP, not only because I am doing something I deeply care about, but also due to the strong collaboration with the city government and other civil society organizations. I am confident that this initiative will generate meaningful local impact while also serving as inspiration for other cities.”

We are also proud to announce a new grant to Instituto Águas do Amanhã, a Rio de Janeiro–based organization building fair and sustainable food systems grounded in Afro-Brazilian ancestral knowledge. Founded during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Institute has developed a powerful integrated approach that connects ancestral and community gardens, solidarity kitchens, and the training of Black women, linking food security and sovereignty with public policy and the strengthening of peripheral territories.

“This initiative not only addresses immediate needs but also contributes to long-term resilience, dignity, and systemic change in historically underserved communities.”

Through this grant, the Institute will support the creation of new plant-based community gardens and improve the infrastructure of 7 solidarity kitchens across Rio’s periphery, expanding access to nutritious food while investing in local leadership and community capacity.

From Mexico, we are proud to share a series of major milestones that reflect the growing power of our advocacy community there. TPP grantee Frank Ortiz has helped drive landmark legal reforms in Baja California — reforms that now formally recognize animals as “seres sujetos de especial protección” (beings subject to special protection) and establish meaningful criminal penalties for cruelty, including prison sentences of 1 to 5 years, and up to 8 years in the most severe cases.

On April 29, organizations within CODAM and Movimiento México Sin Toreo — including several TPP grantees — submitted a coordinated request to Mexico’s Supreme Court to attract and review key cases challenging bullfighting across multiple states, aiming to advance animal protection at the national level. This milestone reflects the kind of concrete legal impact Frank Ortiz’s advocacy is helping achieve, turning protections for animals into enforceable consequences.

Meanwhile, Mexico Coordinator Lourdes Jiménez Mora led a landmark capacity-building initiative through the Universidad Veracruzana and Proyecto ARPA, training over 120 municipal authorities across 57 municipalities in Veracruz on addressing animal maltreatment as a pathway to violence prevention. This effort aligns with Mexico’s recent constitutional reforms formally recognizing animals as sentient beings — a historic step toward building a culture of peace through animal advocacy.

Hansa De Soysa has always believed that the best classroom has no ceiling. As the founder of Nerds Against the Odds (NATOS), a volunteer-led organisation based in Sri Lanka, he has spent years finding ways to bring meaningful, hands-on learning to communities that rarely make it onto the radar of large institutional funders. His vision is rooted in a simple conviction: that children who understand the natural world will grow up to protect it. When the opportunity arose to introduce pollinator-friendly gardens to schools in the Kalutara District, he knew that a seed grant, trusted and flexible, could make it real.

The Pollination Project’s Daily Grant Program provided exactly that foundation. With the support of TPP’s funding, NATOS established five school-based pollinator gardens across the Kalutara District, transforming unused outdoor spaces into living ecosystems and outdoor learning environments. The grant covered native flowering plants, organic fertiliser, gardening tools and equipment, field notebooks for students, and the awareness boards and signage that turned each garden into a public statement about the importance of pollinators to healthy, functioning ecosystems.

“The Pollination Project grant has been one of the most meaningful and flexible grants we have received,” Hansa wrote in his project report. “It gave us the opportunity to introduce urban schools in Kalutara District to the value of pollinators, flowers, and school gardens in a very practical way.”

What the seed grant made possible was both tangible and enduring. Across five schools, students received gardening forks, gloves, watering cans, trowels, and ropes, giving them the physical tools to take ownership of their plots. Each school received fifty flowering plants in the first distribution, with a second round of thirty plants per school following later in the project. Four bottles of liquid flower fertiliser per school and a monthly supply of organic fertiliser kept the gardens nourishing and productive. Ten field notebooks per school gave students a structured way to record what they were observing: which flowers were blooming, which insects were visiting, how the garden changed across weeks and seasons.

The awareness boards and branding sign boards, costing LKR 74,600 (approximately $252), were among the most visible investments in the project’s long-term sustainability. Placed prominently throughout the school grounds, they communicated the ecological significance of what was growing nearby, educating the wider school community, parents, and visitors about native pollinators, biodiversity, and environmental stewardship. These were not decorations. They were the project’s voice when no one from NATOS was present.

By the end of the grant period, Pollinator Paradise had directly impacted over 1,000 people and an estimated 8,000 animals, including bees, butterflies, and other native pollinators whose foraging habitat had been meaningfully expanded. More than 250 environmental science students per school engaged with the gardens as part of their curriculum, with the initiative reaching student bodies of over 1,600 schoolchildren across participating schools. Sixty volunteer hours were contributed to the project, an investment of time that speaks to the community ownership NATOS had fostered.

Then, in November 2025, Cyclone Ditwah struck.

The flooding that swept through the Kalutara District was severe. Many of the garden plots that had been carefully planted and tended were almost entirely destroyed. School closures in the aftermath delayed access, blocked restoration efforts, and compounded the sense of loss for the teams that had worked so hard to build something. For a grassroots project running on volunteer energy and a small seed grant, the scale of the setback could have been terminal.

It was not.

“Even after the gardens were affected by school closures and unforeseen natural disasters,” Hansa reported, “the strong foundation created through the project enabled a swift recovery.”

The NATOS team, working closely with local communities, returned to the affected schools, cleared the damaged areas, and began again. A second round of plant distributions was organised. Resources were redistributed. The same commitment that had built the gardens the first time built them again. The TPP grant’s flexibility, and the trust the Pollination Project extended to its grantees to use funding responsibly and responsively, made that second effort possible. NATOS also drew on its own additional resources to ensure the recovery was complete, a testament to the organisation’s dedication well beyond the scope of the original grant.

“Throughout this period,” Hansa wrote, “the understanding and flexibility shown by the TPP team meant a great deal to us.”

Today, the five gardens in the Kalutara District are in full bloom. They function as active habitats for local pollinators and as outdoor classrooms where students continue to observe, record, and learn. The field notebooks distributed to students are filling with observations. The textbooks donated to school libraries are contributing to a culture of long-term knowledge-sharing. The sign boards remain in place, quietly doing their educational work.

Pollinator Paradise was built on the premise that environmental education and conservation belong in schools, close to children, embedded in the rhythms of the school day. That premise held through a cyclone. It holds now.

For the Pollination Project, whose Daily Grant Program is designed precisely to support changemakers like Hansa De Soysa, this is what seed funding looks like when it lands in the right hands: native plants taking root, children bending over field notebooks, and five school gardens in Sri Lanka that were destroyed by floodwaters and came back stronger.

“We are truly grateful for the support,” Hansa said, “and hope to continue sharing the project’s progress with you in the coming months.”

Have a project like this?
If you’re holding an early idea for change, The Pollination Project is ready to help you bring it to life. Apply for funding!

Kika Jackson has always believed that healing begins close to the ground. As the founder of Kika’s House, a grassroots wellness and economic mobility organization rooted in West Charlotte, she has spent years building programs that meet her neighbors where they are, whether through fitness, nutrition education, financial literacy, or hands-on community gatherings. Her vision has never been about charity handed down from a distance. It has been about neighbors growing something together, literally and figuratively.

That vision found its fullest expression in a community garden in ZIP code 28208, a neighborhood with limited access to green space and fresh produce. With a $500 mini-grant from The Pollination Project’s Daily Grant Program 2025, Kika’s House transformed that garden into a pollinator-friendly, food-producing learning space that strengthened community wellness and environmental stewardship at once.

The TPP grant went directly into the soil. Kika used the funding to purchase 120 vegetable seedlings, 30 herb seedlings, 2 hibiscus plants, 2 seed packages, soil conditioner, and Garden Max bulk soil. Every dollar had a destination. Every plant had a purpose. By the end of the grant period, the project had reached 100 direct participants, logged 1,000 volunteer hours, and generated before-and-after documentation showing measurable growth in plant diversity, bed expansion, and pollinator activity across the site.

The result was an expanded garden with increased biodiversity, new raised beds, and a richer variety of culturally relevant foods that reflected the community it served. Fruit trees, herbs, and native pollinator plants now support bees, butterflies, and other beneficial species, building an ecosystem that gives back season after season. These are not abstract outcomes. They represent neighbors with greater access to fresh food, young people who understand where their meals come from, and a neighborhood green space that did not exist at this scale before a grassroots grant made it possible.

“This investment allowed us to expand our beds, increase biodiversity, and grow a vibrant space where West Charlotte families learned, healed, and thrived,” Kika wrote in her project report.

Philanthropic seed funding of this kind, small in dollar amount and significant in consequence, is exactly what The Pollination Project was designed to provide. A $500 grant did not just buy plants. It created infrastructure for a community to feed itself.

The garden was never meant to be decorative. Through youth, family, and wellness programming woven into every growing session, participants learned how pollinators impact food systems, how soil health connects to human health, and how growing one’s own food is an act of self-determination. Workshops brought together approximately 100 direct participants across the grant period, each one actively engaged with the garden space, the plants, or the educational activities that surrounded them.

Children and families who might never have held a trowel or planted a seed found themselves doing both, and asking questions that stretched far beyond the garden bed. What do bees do for our food? Why does soil need to rest? How does what we grow connect to how we feel?

“Through our youth, family, and wellness programming, participants learned how pollinators impact food systems, soil health, and overall community health,” Kika noted. “We taught neighbors how growing culturally relevant foods, protecting pollinators, and improving nutrition all work together for long-term well-being.”

The Pollination Project’s early investment did more than fund a single growing season. It positioned Kika’s House to pursue, and win, additional support. In 2026, the organization was selected as a recipient of the GroMoreGood Grassroots Grant and Equity Award, receiving $1,500 to deepen its community garden initiatives, a direct result of the credibility and demonstrated impact built with TPP’s backing.

“Your early support helped strengthen our foundation and positioned us to pursue and secure additional opportunities,” Kika wrote. “We are grateful for the role your funding has played in helping us grow both our programming and our credibility as a community-rooted organization.”

Next steps for Kika’s House include strengthening their Fight For Your Life wellness cohorts, scaling nutrition education and financial literacy programming, and continuing to deepen the garden as a site of both food access and community healing.

What happened in West Charlotte is a precise illustration of what grassroots philanthropy, community-led solutions, and environmental stewardship can produce together when they meet a committed leader with a clear vision. A $500 investment in vegetable seedlings, native pollinator plants, and organic soil became a living classroom, a fresh food source, and a gathering space for a neighborhood that needed all three.

Kika Jackson did not wait for the conditions to be perfect. She built the conditions herself, with her neighbors, and with a seed grant that trusted her to do exactly that.

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If you’re holding an early idea for change, The Pollination Project is ready to help you bring it to life. Apply for funding!

Sofiia Klymovych is an artist living in Kyiv who knows firsthand what it means to carry the weight of war. That personal experience, rather than distancing her from the crisis around her, became the foundation of a project rooted in empathy, creativity, and quiet resilience. Her vision was clear: give displaced children a space where they could breathe, create, and feel safe, and do it entirely free of charge.

With support from The Pollination Project’s Daily Grant Program 2025, Sofiia turned that vision into a living, weekly reality. The seed grant of $483.50 USD funded the essential infrastructure of the classes: ten easels, canvases, drawing paper, acrylic paints, gouache, brushes, pastels, pencils, chairs, and small tables for paints. These were not luxury items. They were the literal tools through which approximately 70 children found their voices.

“Working with children affected by the war and seeing their creativity and emotions expressed through painting has been both inspiring and therapeutic,” Sofiia reflected in her project report. “The TPP grant made it possible to provide free materials and support for these children.”

The classes were held in an offline, in-person format in Kyiv, combining artistic instruction with elements of art therapy. Many of the participants were internally displaced children, having fled their homes due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. For several of them, simply engaging in a new environment was its own challenge. Sofiia noted that many children initially struggled to open up or feel confident enough to pick up a brush. Her response was patience, flexibility, and consistency. Over time, that approach worked. Children who once sat quietly at the edges of the room began leading their own creative explorations, and parents reported reduced anxiety and improved mood in their children as the weeks went on.

“Over time, as trust was built, the children became more open, actively involved, and confident in expressing their emotions through art,” she wrote.

The project’s most emotionally resonant moment came during the winter holiday season, when the children channeled their gratitude into drawings for Ukrainian soldiers serving at the front. Packages of these artworks were prepared and sent to the military, creating a loop of care between the youngest and most vulnerable members of society and those bearing the hardest burdens of the war. Approximately 70 unique participants took part across the grant period, with 45 volunteer hours contributed and every single class offered free of charge.

Philanthropic seed funding of this kind, small in dollar amount and large in consequence, is precisely what The Pollination Project was built to provide.

“For me, as someone affected by the war, working with children through painting is therapeutic and inspires me to continue this project,” Sofiia wrote.

Many displaced children in Kyiv have not yet had the opportunity to join. She intends to change that.

Have a project like this?
If you’re holding an early idea for change, The Pollination Project is ready to help you bring it to life. Apply for funding!

Hope Matoomana Mkunte grew up watching trees disappear. Across Chongwe District, where agriculture and charcoal production have stripped hillsides bare for decades, the land he knew as a child has grown thinner, hotter, and harder to farm. His response was not to leave, but to plant. Green Gold Social Initiative, the grassroots organisation he founded, has made a singular bet: that restoring native trees to rural Zambia is among the most powerful things a community can do for its own future, and that communities themselves are best placed to do it.

A seed grant from The Pollination Project gave him the capital to prove it.

With philanthropic support from TPP’s Daily Grant Program, Mkunte launched the Chongwe Reforestation Initiative, a nine-month project that planted 17,081 indigenous trees, delivered climate education workshops at four schools, established a permanent on-site tree nursery, and employed five young people from Chisengo village in grow-bag production, all on a budget of $1,000.

“The TPP grant didn’t just fund tree planting. It gave us the infrastructure to scale — grow bags, trained youth, community trust. That foundation is now permanent.”

Before the TPP grant, Green Gold Social had the vision and the relationships, but not the working capital to act on them. The grant closed that gap entirely.

Mkunte’s team began by establishing a grow-bag production system at Chisengo village, putting five young people to work producing the seedling sleeves that give saplings stronger root systems and dramatically improve their survival rate after planting. A practical skill, and a foundation for every future season.

At four schools across Chongwe, climate workshops combined environmental education with hands-on planting, reaching 350 students. At Bimbe Primary, 81 Musiniga trees went in the ground, planted by the children who will grow up in their shade. At AVOH, one of the district’s largest schools, a formal nursery partnership was signed, creating an institutional anchor for reforestation education beyond any single grant cycle.

The project culminated in February 2026, when village leadership, youth volunteers, and community members gathered at Chisengo and planted 17,000 indigenous trees across two days. 455 people directly reached. 420 volunteer hours given freely.

“When the village comes together to plant 17,000 trees in two days, something shifts. This is no longer a project. It belongs to them.”

As Earth Day approaches on April 22, the 17,000 trees planted at Chisengo village stand as a vivid, countable example of what community-led environmental philanthropy can accomplish when a small, targeted grant meets deep local knowledge and genuine community ownership. The grow-bag production system now running at Chisengo is permanent infrastructure for every future planting season. The five youth trained in production carry skills and income potential that extend well beyond the grant period. And the village leadership who co-planned and co-hosted the February event are now the stewards of what they planted together.

Green Gold Social’s next goal is to scale the Chongwe Reforestation Project to 100,000 trees and expand to ten more villages. The infrastructure is already in place. The community relationships are already built. What the project needs now is what the TPP grant first provided: funding that trusts the people closest to the land to know how best to restore it.

The Pollination Project’s model of small, trust-based seed grants to individual changemakers is precisely what made this possible. No large institution, no lengthy approval process, no requirement to already be significant before being treated as significant. Just a grant, a vision, and the freedom to act.

For the forests that have been disappearing from Chongwe for decades, Hope Mkunte and his community are making sure the story turns around.

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If you’re holding an early idea for change, The Pollination Project is ready to help you bring it to life. Apply for funding!

Liz Wheeler has spent years listening to animals that most people never think twice about. As the founder of Secondhand Stories, a chicken sanctuary nestled in Lombardy, Ontario, she built her life around the belief that farmed animals deserve the same attention, empathy, and storytelling as any beloved companion. What she needed was a way to bring that conviction to a wider audience, to crack open the carefully maintained myths of industrial chicken farming and replace them with something harder to ignore: the truth.

A seed grant from The Pollination Project gave her exactly that opportunity.

With philanthropic support from TPP’s Daily Grant Program, Wheeler launched What The Flock Fridays (WTFF), a 13-week online educational campaign on Instagram and Facebook designed to challenge widespread misconceptions about how chickens are raised and killed in Canada. The initiative paired myth-busting, research-backed content with weekly giveaways featuring vegan egg replacers, plant-based recipe books, and animal advocacy titles, turning passive scrollers into active participants in a conversation about chicken welfare and conscious consumption.

“It’s sad to see how many companies try to mask their cruelty,” one campaign participant wrote, capturing precisely the kind of awakening Wheeler had set out to provoke.

Before the TPP grant, Secondhand Stories was doing meaningful work within a limited reach. The funding changed the scale of what was possible. Wheeler used the grant to purchase giveaway prizes including books such as Not A Nugget and Maggie the Chicken, vegan pantry staples like Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer and Kala Namak Salt, and gift cards to vegan retailers Vegan Supply Co. and Keepin’ It Vegan, all chosen to lower the practical barriers between awareness and action. Shipping costs to send prizes across Canada and internationally were also covered, ensuring the campaign’s generosity reached beyond Wheeler’s immediate community.

The results were striking. Across 13 posts, the campaign accumulated 49,027 combined likes on Facebook and Instagram, a 48% increase in overall engagement compared to the pre-campaign baseline established in September 2025. Secondhand Stories gained 61 new followers directly attributable to the WTFF series, ending what Wheeler described as a months-long period of audience stagnation.

More significant than the numbers, however, was what happened in people’s kitchens and grocery carts.

Wheeler employed a rigorous mixed-method evaluation strategy to measure real behavioral change, not just engagement metrics. Before the campaign launched, she surveyed 114 active followers via Instagram Stories. The results confirmed that her audience was not an echo chamber: 23% identified as omnivores, 17% as flexitarians, and 34% reported eating chicken or eggs daily or weekly. These were the habits she was determined to disrupt.

By the campaign’s close, the exit data told a different story. The survey recorded a 10% decrease in self-identified omnivores and an 18% increase in vegetarians, suggesting meaningful movement along what Wheeler calls “the compassion spectrum.” Daily consumption of eggs and chicken dropped by 9%. Most powerfully, 48% of active participants explicitly reported eating fewer animal products as a direct result of the WTFF content, and 57% tried a new vegan recipe during the campaign period.

“The educational seeds we planted took root,” Wheeler reflected in her grant follow-up report. The campaign did not simply raise awareness. It provided the practical tools and motivation necessary for people to make compassionate lifestyle choices.

The path was not without obstacles. Midway through the campaign, Wheeler’s family experienced a devastating loss. She paused the series for two weeks to grieve, before returning to complete all 13 posts on schedule. Her commitment to the project in the face of personal hardship speaks to the depth of her conviction.

The campaign also ran headlong into the structural hostility social media platforms can show toward animal advocacy content. The very first post generated over 14,000 views, 42 shares, and immediate follower growth, a remarkable debut. But when Wheeler attempted to amplify that momentum through paid promotion, Meta’s automated systems flagged the educational content as “Political and Social Issues,” rejecting multiple boosting requests and cutting off access to unengaged audiences. The downward trend in views that followed underscored a truth that grassroots advocates know well: organic community sharing remains the most powerful and the most precarious engine of change.

The experience, Wheeler noted, highlighted “the volatility of paid advocacy on social platforms and the importance of our organic community sharing the content.”

Every piece of content created for What The Flock Fridays now lives in a permanent, evergreen resource library on the Secondhand Stories website, freely accessible long after the campaign concluded. The myth-busting fact sheets, vegan recipes, and educational graphics continue to reach new visitors, compounding the impact of a single grant investment over time.

Wheeler has chosen to evolve her content strategy going forward, pivoting toward immersive storytelling that foregrounds the individual personalities and complex behaviors of the sanctuary’s resident chickens. Rather than leading with statistics, she will lead with lives, letting the animals themselves make the case for compassion. The WTFF resource library will serve as a permanent foundation to support and contextualize those stories whenever a rescue narrative captures public attention.

The Pollination Project’s model of small, trust-based seed grants to individual changemakers is precisely what made this campaign possible. No large institution, no lengthy approval process, no requirement to already be significant before being treated as significant. Just a grant, a vision, and the freedom to act.

For the chickens that never appear in sanctuary photos, for the millions living inside industrial systems that prefer invisibility, Liz Wheeler is making sure the story gets told.

Have a project like this?
If you’re holding an early idea for change, The Pollination Project is ready to help you bring it to life. Apply for funding!