Teen Community Empowerment Contest Offers $1,000 Grants

Are you a teen with a great idea about how you could give back to your community and help others around you? Could you use some money to make your dream a reality?

Austin’s RangerACE program just might have the solution to getting your project off the ground. An outreach program of the Covalent Foundation, RangerACE has opened its spring teen community empowerment contest to all Central Texas youth ages 12-17. If the foundation chooses your project you can earn up to $1,000 to fund it. Applications for spring grants are open now through January 20, 2021.

Here’s how four teens used RangerACE funds last summer and fall to succeed in helping others and their communities:

• Yazzen Turk, a senior at Austin’s Northeast Early College High School, worked with the school’s social worker to identify and survey food-insecure families regarding their knowledge of healthy meal preparation. He provided bilingual recipes from the Sustainable Food Center. He planned, shopped for, and delivered a total of 50 meal kits to feed 10 families over a two-week period.

• Cedar Park High School junior Michael Peterson improved the condition and readability of stone signs in three area parks, testing cleaning methods and solutions first to find the best ones. He formed a volunteer team to help with the cleaning and relettering last fall. He also created a database documenting the condition of stone signage in 26 of the remaining 43 city parks so park staff could track their future maintenance.

• Jessica Westra, a junior at Round Rock’s Stony Point High School, wrote encouraging notes and prepared care kits for seniors living in care facilities during COVID-19 restrictions. The kits included items such as coloring books, puzzles, fidget spinners, lip balm, and hand sanitizer. Jessica wanted to draw attention to the needs of the elderly in our nursing homes and make them feel supported and encouraged.

• Round Rock’s Cedar Ridge High School senior Maya Novick focused her attention on the youngest community members, preparing arts and crafts project kits for students stuck at home due to summer camp cancellations and economic hardships. When the project supplies dwindled, Maya’s kits also included a list of websites where parents could find more ideas and creative inspiration.

Ready to see if your project idea might qualify? It only takes a few minutes to preregister. Visit https://forms. gle/8aSnJcFsk7DPbfNTA. Preregistration helps to determine if your project is ready for the proposal and budget stage.

For a video describing the full proposal process, visit www. rangerace.org/community-empowerment-contest.