The Maryland Agricultural Education and Rural Development Assistance Fund (MAERDAF) Grant Review Board and Rural Maryland Council (RMC) are pleased to announce the Fiscal Year 2014 grant awardees:
Energetics Technology Center – $18,921 for creating an agricultural technology transfer program
Evergreen Heritage Center Foundation, Inc. – $21,705 for building an educational heritage wood shop
LEAD Maryland Foundation, Inc. – $25,000 for funding educational seminars for emerging rural leaders
Maintaining Active Citizens (MAC, Inc.) – $24,729 for the Living Well With Chronic Disease program
Maryland Association of Soil Conservation Districts – $14,268 for supporting the Maryland Envirothon educational competition
Small Business and Technology Development Center – $17,327 for creation of educational business development workshops catered toward watermen
Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission of the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland – $5,650 for increasing accessibility to farmers markets to SNAP participants
Upper Shore Regional Council – $19,900 for building a Harvest Directory mobile resource and app.
Western Maryland Regional Library – $19,500 for digitization of documents of historical relevance
For fiscal year 2014, the RMC received 29 applications requesting more than $560,000 in funding and dispersed a total of $167,000. Of the nine organizations awarded grants, three serve residents of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, two serve Western Maryland, and two are based in Southern Maryland. The remaining two organizations have a statewide focus
MAERDAF provides grants to rural-serving nonprofit organizations that promote statewide and regional planning, economic and community development, and agricultural and forestry education. Also eligible are rural community colleges that support small and agricultural businesses through enhanced training and technical assistance. The program’s goal is to increase the overall capacity of these organizations and community colleges to meet a multitude of rural development challenges and to help them establish new public/private partnerships for leveraging non-state sources of funding.
The Rural Maryland Council is an independent state agency and Maryland’s federally designated State Rural Development Council under the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Rural Development Partnership. Its mission is to bring together federal, state, county and municipal government officials as well as representatives of the for-profit and nonprofit sectors to identify challenges unique to rural communities and to develop and implement policy solutions. As a collaborative partnership, the RMC operates under the guidance of a 40-member Executive Board, in a nonpartisan and non-discriminatory manner.
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