CartoDB Climate Grants to give up to $3500 to nonprofits working on climate change
In June 2013, the President of the United States announced the Climate Action Plan,an effort cut carbon pollution, prepare communities for the impacts of climate change, and lead international efforts to address this global challenge.
Delivering on a commitment in the President’s Climate Action Plan, the Obama Administration is today launching the Climate Data Initiative, an effort to leverage data to help the American people understand and prepare for climate change. The initiative is aimed at advancing environmental science, preparedness, and education through the use of open data. The goals of the initiative are closely aligned with the core mission of CartoDB, to promote and enable people to make a better world through understanding of data. It is because of that alignment that we have decided to go a step further. Today we are launching CartoDB Climate Grants, an exciting new program to promote some of the world’s most important mapping projects.
CartoDB Climate Grants will be giving grants between $50 and $3,500 to organizations doing really important work for our world. The Climate Grants program really springs from something we have always wanted to do, put CartoDB into the hands of the people we believe in. Through CartoDB Climate Grants, we hope organizations succeed in building data visualizations and applications to help educate and improve our understanding of climate change. In coordination with the Climate Data Initiative, we think we can empower more people to create tools and visualizations that will educate and create change.
Some of you may not know our history, but CartoDB is the product of our company, Vizzuality. At Vizzuality, we worked for a long time on the idea that data, science, and the challenges facing our environment could be better addressed through data communication, mapping, and better user-engagement through the web. So much of our projects relied heavily on the map. We eventually got the idea that if we built a product easy enough to use we could enable anyone to create beautiful and interactive maps on the web.
Our suspicion turned out to be true, so now with Climate Grants we can ensure that some of the most important projects are able to gain from our work. We feel that as our service grows and our user’s maps become more popular on the web, we can expand our offerings to those map-makers who need the CartoDB the most. We are going to be providing up to $3500 to successful applicants to use on CartoDB infrastructure. Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis, so if you think your project aligns well with our mission, head over to http://www.cartodb.com/climate to get details and apply.
Image credit: Beth Scupham