Vermont Business Magazine Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), Vice Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced Wednesday that Vermont organizations have been awarded three highly competitive National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) matching grants totaling $270,000. The grants, to a Brattleboro history project, the University of Vermont, and the Vermont Farmers Market Education Center, will fund projects for humanities research and public engagement.
Leahy said: “Grants like these help us foster and conserve the rich and cohesive communities that we want. These funds will help fund programs, art and stories that bring together Vermonters and give us a better understanding of our great state. I have fought hard on the Appropriations Committee to protect funding for the humanities from the drastic cuts proposed by the Trump Administration, whose priorities do not match Vermont’s priorities, or the priorities of the American people.”
Leahy, as the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, is leading the opposition to the unbalanced priorities and devastating budget cuts proposed by the Trump Administration, which seeks to eliminate the NEH entirely, as well as federal funding for such agencies as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Lissa Weinmann, Project Director of Peoples, Places and History of Words in Brattleboro, Vermont, which will receive $150,000, said: “Receipt of the grant now gives us the leg-up to secure the additional resources needed to illuminate and share the greater Brattleboro area’s rich but little-known history of words -- stories, literature, publishing, printing -- to instill greater pride of place for those who live, work and raise families here as well as to inform and inspire those who visit.” The project is a collaborative effort of four local groups, including Marlboro College, the Brattleboro Literary Festival, the Brattleboro Historical Society and Write Action.
The University of Vermont will receive $90,000 for a project entitled Who Farms? Toward A Fuller Picture Of The Vermont Farmer And Agricultural Landscape, and the Vermont Farmers Market Education Center will receive $30,000 for a project called Root Words. All projects were selected through a highly competitive peer review and selection process.
WASHINGTON (WEDNESDAY, August 2, 2017) – Senator Patrick Leahy