Thank you, Ontario Trillium Fund!

Posted on by Kat Kavanagh

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Hurrah! We have been lucky enough to receive an Ontario Trillium Fund seed grant to help us get the testing and partnerships we need to import more data, make new partnerships, learn more protocols, pay for hosting, improve our user’s experiences, add features and lots more!

Our summer program is already in motion!

Our funding starts in May and runs until October, to correspond perfectly with our testing season. We feel honoured to receive this vote of confidence, and also to benefit from their extensive experience running environmental and social programs in Ontario. Most of our testing will be in the Ottawa Valley, Rideau Valley and Mississippi Valley, but of course I’m up for visiting anywhere in Ontario! The more great places and people I get to visit, the better!  The funding doesn’t provide full-time salaries for us, but it means we can devote more time to the project.

Introducing Pete

Pete worked with us when we created the first prototype, so we’re happy to bring him back in to help us this summer. Pete is currently working towards an undergraduate degree in Geography from the University of Ottawa and brings experience with fieldwork in the environmental sciences to the team.

What the grant will help us with

  • TESTING! As part of this project, we will go on a minimum of 32 adventures… er, I mean testing sessions
  • Development: We’ll have more time and development resources to fix the things we want to do, and work on more ambitious projects
  • Servers and other overheads: For 6 months, this is all covered! Yay!
  • Translation: we got a little bit of money to help us with French, although our volunteers are helping us with the bulk of this!
  • Importing data: we’ll have the time and resources to get more and more data into the system
  • Printing: We’ll be able to make promotional items like flyers, badges and much more!
  • Insurance: Thanks so much to this grant for helping us cover our insurance costs for this year. What a relief!

What’s first?

This week we will be accompanying a youth group at Brewery Creek to learn about testing protocols and methods. Stay tuned for much more happening over the coming months. And THANK YOU Ontario Trillium Fund for believing in our project!