Pews in sunlight

News & Announcements

A young girl holds a book published by Santi School in Nepal

Envision Board Grant Application

February 4, 2022

Grant Deadline March 1, 2022

The Envision Board is pleased to announce its first round of funding for calendar year 2022, with an application deadline of Tuesday, March 1, 2022. The Envision Fund of Catonsville Presbyterian Church is a grant fund established after a generous bequest from the estate of a long-time CPC member and trustee, Robert Riley. The mission of the Envision Fund is to extend the church’s mission and ministry beyond the day-to-day life of the congregation, and does so by awarding grants for Development, Service in Community, and Social Justice Advocacy. Projects may serve the Catonsville Presbyterian Church (internal), Local, National, and/or International communities.

External applicants must have a church-based sponsor, and internal applicants must follow a submission process with Committees of the church. For internal applicants, if you are interested in submitting an application for funding, please ensure you are working with the applicable Committee that best aligns with your project.

Applications, Proposal Criteria, Sponsorship Forms and contact information may be found at https://catonsvillepres.org/envision-fund/. For any questions and/or to be connected to a Committee who may provide appropriate sponsorship, please contact envision_fund@catonsvillepres.org.

Two Funded Projects

The Envision Board would like to share with you from time to time reports on some of the projects that the grants have funded. Here are two.

The Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake is a Maryland based organization whose mission is to engage faith congregations to be caretakers of our shared watershed. CPC is a member. The Envision Board awarded this organiza- tion $6,500 to aid in the development of a new website. With these funds, they created a new web page which display locations of engaged congregations. Among other things, the new website also provides forms for collecting stories about projects that congregations have completed, such as our own native plant garden. If you look at their website, you will see our church and a picture of the garden which can help other congregations commit to projects that care for our envi- ronment as part of the Chesapeake watershed.

We have a long relationship the Santi School in Nepal and its teacher training projects. In 2020 the school was awarded a grant of $10,000 to kick start their children’s literature publishing arm. Despite the challenges of Covid, they have 3 books in progress. The authors are participants in the Santi School Teacher Training workshops. The books have been written in Nepali with culturally appropriate Nepali settings and characters. They will be illustrated and published locally. One is titled, “Bees”. It was developed by 5 primary teachers and is inspired by beehives located at two of the schools.