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Health & Fitness

Debbie Kupfer Receives Grant for Tolland Youth Garden

Master Gardener Debbie Kupfer gets grant money for the Tolland Youth Garden.

Tolland Youth Garden team member and master gardener Debbie Kupfer received a $350 grant for the Youth Garden from the Connecticut Master Gardener Association. 

Debbie said, “The CMGA Grants Committee’s application, unlike most other grants, is not difficult or frustrating. The committee does ask for a written progress report on the project within three months as a way of following up on the project and knowing that their money is being used to accomplish their goal of promoting horticultural knowledge in the community.” She also had to describe the project and how it would serve the community with gardening based activities.

Everyone on the Garden team is working on one or more projects in order to advance Garden goals, so we all know how challenging it can be to get help in various form.  But some know firsthand the special tediousness of grant applications.

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Sandie Benjamin, Team chair, will tell you it’s definitely not usually that easy.

Having put in many hours researching and navigating a variety of applications and differing requirements, Sandie has had to research applicable town statistics, anticipated project costs and volunteer and youth participation, short and long term goals, and more.

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Sandie said that, “As a start-up project, we have no track record. Each grant agency has slightly different priorities: school connection, work with children at risk, proximity to the location of the granting organization, rural [vs] urban setting, need --on and on.”

Debbie and Sandie are both positive thinking people, and like the rest of the Youth Garden team, are quick to appreciate all of the help we have gotten thus far, which Sandie related in a recent email:

  • The Lions Club already donated money toward our fence
  • Sandie received Select Seeds for our Magical Seeds Workshop and first season planting
  • Financial and moral support from Tolland Garden Paths
  • Tremendous support from the Recreation Department: our site, mulch, fence posts, co-sponsorship of our spring and summer programs
  • Wonderful support from individuals: the gifts of compost and manure, digging in at the groundbreaking
  • And from groups: Girl Scouts, 4-H Piston Pushers, school representatives and teachers.

I thought it was interesting that in response to my question: What stands in your way of getting money through grants, Sandie wrote: Being a start-up in an affluent community.

I lived in Tolland from birth to about age 18, moving back a few years ago. I was fortunate enough to not have to think about socio-economic status during those years. That came later, as I worked my way through Manchester Community College, Cape Cod Community College, and on to Smith College for my bachelor’s degree (I slept for twelve hours straight after graduation).

Growing up, I knew that I liked my schools, the woods and ponds, and thought it was really neat that Grandpa had barns full of hay, a field with cows in it, and both sets of grandparents had beautiful gardens and vegetable stands.

Maybe that’s one of the cool things about Tolland – it has the ability to nurture all of that.

Maybe that’s why, despite the challenges, things keep coming together for the Tolland Youth Garden.

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