Flying Cloud Institute Receives Funding from the Josephine and Louise Crane Foundation
Flying Cloud Institute announces funding from the Josephine and Louise Crane Foundation to support its programs in Pittsfield and Community Learning in the Berkshires or “CLuB.”
Pittsfield programming support includes funding a virtual Girls Science Club, with guest scientists to inspire the next generation of innovators. The Club was recently visited by Carrieanne Petrik, a geologist and the MVP (Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness) Berkshires and Hilltowns regional coordinator. Carrieanne is working with communities to find strategies to become more resilient to the effects of climate change. Girls learned how rural towns such as ours in the Berkshires, with dirt and gravel roads, reduced access to medical treatment, lack of emergency shelters and aging populations, are more vulnerable to our changing planet.
Funding also supports CLuB, which is a coalition of nonprofit organizations, including Flying Cloud Institute, Greenagers, Berkshire South Regional Community Center, and Volunteers in Medicine, offering remote learning sites for academic support and cultural enrichment during the pandemic. CLuB serves students from Kindergarten through 8th grade, in the Berkshire Hills and Southern Berkshire Regional School Districts, at two locations in southern Berkshire County. Priority placement is given to the children of essential workers, who receive skilled assistance with their school-assigned academic work, as well as extensive, daily enrichment. Enrichment activities include making and learning the science behind ice cream, exploring convection currents over a campfire, creating beaver lodges out of clay and making jewelry.
The Josephine and Louise Crane Foundation is a fourth-generation private family foundation established in 1956, which supports nonprofit organizations in Massachusetts.