Title,Recipient,Competition,"Fiscal Year","Award Number","Federal Funding","Principal Investigator",State,City,County,District,Lat/Long,"Grant Dates",Abstract,Partners "CREATE Resilience: Community Resilience through Education, Art, Technology, and Engagement","Nurture Nature Center","2018: ELG for Community Resilience to Extreme Weather Events and Environmental Hazards",2018,NA18SEC0080005,"$429,420","Rachel Carr",Pennsylvania,Easton,Northampton,PA07,"40.69063, -75.21378","2018-10-01T00:00:00 - 2023-09-30T00:00:00","CREATE Resilience: Community Resilience through Education, Art, Technology and Engagement, is a multi-disciplinary collaboration between youth and community to 1) improve environmental hazards literacy, and 2) increase engagement in resiliency actions by youth and adult residents in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. CREATE Resilience is designed to increase community knowledge about weather and climate science, risks from local hazards, and strategies for hazard mitigation, while co-creating a vision for community resilience. Developed by Nurture Nature Center (NNC) in Easton, PA, the four-year project will work with local, state and federal partners in three hazard-prone communities in the Lehigh Valley (Easton, Bangor and Wilson areas). Hazards, particularly weather-related hazards including flooding, have had major impacts in these communities historically and recently, causing extensive damage to property and disruption to community services. Damaging river flooding along the Delaware River in 2004, 2005 and 2006 highlighted major planning and safety challenges for many municipalities in the area with high flood risk, and a recently updated regional Hazard Mitigation plan highlighted other hazards – as well as the need for public education about hazards and mitigation. CREATE Resilience’s advisory board will work with NNC to bring education and engagement events to teach the science of these hazards, as well the household and community-level strategies and tools available for resilience. Partners include the National Weather Service (NWS) Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center and Mt. Holly, NJ Weather Forecast Office, and Weather Prediction Center, as well as LV Planning Commission, Northampton County Emergency Management Agency, LV Community Foundation, Lafayette College, and FEMA Region 3 Mitigation Division. In years 1 and 2, the project will form CREATE Youth Ambassador teams, in which student interns from area high schools will meet NWS meteorologists, engage in community storytelling events, develop local hazard and resilience tours, and learn from climate and other scientists about hazards and strategies for resilience. Ambassadors will also develop and lead programming for community residents. Simultaneously, residents will participate in active-learning education events, dialogue forums, arts-based activities, technology-based programs using NOAA assets, and hands-on preparedness activities. Each community will build a collective understanding of local hazards and mitigation strategies, and co-create a vision for resilience, represented in traveling visual artist-designed murals in the third year of the project. This education and shared vision will build community support for planning and resilience and help households in making better preparedness decisions. Dissemination through Science on a Sphere® and guidebooks will share the replicable model with other organizations and communities, extending the reach of the project. Close cooperation with NWS offices helps the project meet key goals of NOAA’s Education Strategic Plan, related to safety/preparedness and a science-informed society. Through public events and print materials, the project will showcase and interpret NOAA-related science and data with area residents, while creating collaborative learning opportunities for youth and community to interact with NOAA scientists. CREATE Resilience also engages youth and adults in preparing for hazards, and in multi-generational learning to improve community awareness and involvement in preparedness and mitigation.","NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, City University of New York (CUNY) / Hunter College, NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) / National Centers for Environmental Prediction, NOAA Climate Program Office (CPO), Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast (CCRUN), NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) Mount Holly, NJ Weather Forecast Office, NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) State College, Pennsylvania Forecast Office, Lehigh Valley Community Foundation, Lafayette College / Civil and Environmental Engineering, Easton Area School District, Wilson Area School District, Northampton County Emergency Management Services, Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) / Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center (RFC), Bangor Area School District, American Society of Civil Engineers / Lehigh Valley Section, Northampton County Conservation District, Northampton County Parks & Recreation Division, City of Easton, Martins-Jacoby Watershed Association, Borough of Wilson, PAZA, Tree of Life, Williams Township Municipal Building" "U.S. Virgin Islands Storm Strong Program","University of the Virgin Islands / Center for Marine and Environmental Studies","2018: ELG for Community Resilience to Extreme Weather Events and Environmental Hazards",2018,NA18SEC0080010,"$499,998","Kristin Wilson Grimes","U.S. Virgin Islands","St. Thomas","Saint Thomas",VI00,"18.34332, -64.97286","2018-10-01T00:00:00 - 2024-09-30T00:00:00","Under leadership from the University of the Virgin Islands, the Virgin Islands Marine Advisory Service, and local, non-profit, long-term, 2017 storm recovery groups, this 5-year project will create the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) Storm Strong Program. To date, minimal efforts have been made to engage the USVI community in hurricane education and preparation. As a result, USVI communities face significant, but often preventable, storm risks. This is the Territory’s first sustained, community-based, hurricane hazard preparedness, and community leadership building program. The USVI Storm Strong Program will engage underserved and underrepresented middle- and high-school youth and their families on all of the Territory’s main islands - St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix - in a program modelled after the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit framework. Youth and their families will: (1) explore the science and hazards associated with hurricanes, (2) assess their communities’ vulnerabilities and associated risks, (3) evaluate personal and community assets and options to increase resilience, (4) prioritize and plan for events occurring before, during, and after a storm, and (5) take action, in this case, through Community Transfer Projects, which will turn the information gained through the Program into local actions to increase individual and community resilience, sharing knowledge and actions with the broader USVI community and beyond. Through this training, ~400 USVI youth and their families will be empowered as environmental leaders and change agents within their communities and important insights will be learned as to how best to engage underrepresented and underserved groups in hazard preparedness. Creation of the USVI Storm Strong Program is timely, given the significant impacts resulting from Hurricanes Irma and Maria, two Category 5 hurricanes that devastated the USVI in September 2017. These storms provide a window of opportunity to bring together partners from federal, territorial, non-governmental, academic, and the private sector, to develop a strategic, cohesive, long-term, high-impact, community-based program to improve environmental literacy and extreme weather hazard preparedness in the Territory, goals that align with the mission of NOAA’s Office of Education.","Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) / Region II, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), NOAA OR&R's Marine Debris Program, U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Human Services, U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Natural Resources, University of the Virgin Islands / Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (VI-EPSCoR), University of the Virgin Islands / Marine Advisory Service (VIMAS) at St. Croix, University of the Virgin Islands / Office of the Provost, St. Croix Christian Church, St. John Community Foundation, St. Thomas Recovery Team, Catalyst Miami, The Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands, University of the Virgin Islands / Center for Excellence in Leadership and Learning / Safety In Paradise, U.S. Virgin Islands Children's Museum, My Brother’s Workshop, St. Croix Environmental Association, Virgin Islands Conservation Society / Blue Flag, American Red Cross of the U.S. Virgin Islands"