This program seeks 12 Midwest rural land stewards to share powerful stories of Reciprocity, Resilience, or Love as Stewardship on their land.
Each participant will receive a $4,000 stipend and support to produce at least three storytelling outputs (e.g., media, community events, photo essays) between March-November 2026, alongside a supportive peer community.
Climate Land Leaders is part of a working group of climate and agriculture organizations that want to support you in sharing your story. Read more about the initiative here. Applicants are invited to apply for a grant by rooting their work within one or more of the following themes:
Reciprocity - Description: Your story explores the give and take between people, land, animals, and past and future generations. Showcase what reciprocity looks like in your daily life or community practices. How do you care for the land and how does the land care for you?
Resilience - Description: With multiple, intersecting crises at our door, how are you building land-based resilience in your work, your communities, and your livelihoods? Highlight the hopeful, practical work you are doing to build resilience so you and future generations can thrive. Highlight how you are restoring soil, water, and ecological health, rebuilding community networks, or tending to the wellbeing of neighbors who are harmed by unjust systems. How are you rebalancing relationships disrupted by extraction, colonization, or climate change?
Love as Stewardship - Description: This theme invites you to share the story of what you love most about your land, your community, or your place — and what you’re doing to protect it. Show us what’s at stake and what you are fighting for, tending to, or nurturing. How does love become a force for stewardship, protection, and action?
How the mini grant program works:
You develop a storytelling project with our support, to be implemented March through November, 2026. We will work with you to develop a project that energizes you, achieves your goals and uses the storytelling strategies you’re most interested in. This will include having a storytelling focus, identifying audiences you want to reach, developing messages you want to share and reaching your audiences with your messages.
We will fund your project with a mini grant of $3,500 – think of this as a storytelling salary in recognition of your time, energy and knowledge used to develop and implement your project. We will also provide an additional $500 for project expenses you may have, like travel, food for an in-person event, etc.
We will offer support along the way, including access to current science on the impacts of agriculture on climate, tips for communicating about climate action, feedback on messages and written pieces, support reaching out to local and regional media outlets, and other technical support identified during your project. We also offer our organizations’ platforms for amplifying your story to broader audiences.
If accepted, you commit to the following:
- A virtual project kick-off in March to meet the cohort of fellow storytellers (60 minutes)
- Monthly 1:1 planning meetings/project check-ins (30 minutes each)
- 2-3 virtual meetings/workshops with other storytellers (90 minutes each). Topics may include media training and storytelling
- A virtual project wrap-up and feedback session (60 minutes)
- At least 3 (three) outputs (examples include: media coverage, op-ed published, host a community gathering, podcast, photo exhibit, etc.)
We estimate your time expenditure over the course of the project to average 5 hours per month, including the time described above.