Vote Nevada Supporters,

As promised, here is the second message about our three projects from the Summer Civics Festival.

First, we have been meeting with a wide range of community organizations to discuss redistricting and drawing communities of interest maps through Princeton’s software Representable. 

Meeting with fellow Nevadans who represent our rich cultural tapestry has been truly inspiring and encouraged us to submit a grant application. Nevada Humanities offers $7,500 grants for projects that emphasize the humanities and uplifts under-resourced populations, so we are applying to blend our redistricting work with our oral history initiative.  Our grant proposal title is: Weaving Together Nevada’s Communities of Interest

We are proposing recording interviews with six prominent Nevadans to run on our YouTube channel during the legislative redistricting special session.  These interviews will help to remind us that every Nevadan deserves fair representation both in our historical record and in our redistricting maps. 

After the redistricting session, we will record interviews with prominent communities of interest from around the state to run on a podcast.  These interviews will be available for community and student researchers to use now and will be archived to use in ten years for the next redistricting cycle.

In March, we will also highlight prominent women from our communities of interest interviews during special events celebrating Women’s History Month.  These special interviews will be highlighted as “Women Weaving Our Communities Together.” 

To qualify for the Nevada Humanities grant, however, we must match the grant with 1:1 funding.

Our second civics project is our permanent Justice Elections Voter Guide.  Last election cycle we scrambled to put together a Judicial Candidates Voter Resources Guide to help voters to learn about the judiciary, what the different courts do, and how to approach evaluating judicial candidates. 

Instead of reinventing this effort every election cycle, we plan to create a permanent Justice Elections Voter Guide, which will have civics information about the judiciary and other justice-related offices we elect as well as space for candidates each election cycle. 

We have community volunteers who agree with our concept and are willing to help create this permanent online resource.  We will need some funding to maintain a dedicated website and to offer stipends to students who will contribute to the Guide’s content.  We estimate needing approximately $1,500.

 And our third civics project is our Grassroots Economic Development Initiative. This is our Economic Development Is For the Birds project we discussed back in April.  Since then we have had conversations with the Wetlands Park Friends and believe we can create a partnership that includes Vote Nevada, Wetlands Park Friends, and the Red Rock Audubon Chapter. 

Between our three organizations we will work with teachers and students across Nevada to create an economic development plan based on promoting bird watching and citizen scientist events.  This project will also include some stipends for our project volunteers, so we are budgeting $1,000.

Altogether, we are fundraising for $10,000 for our 2021-2022 civic engagement projects.  If you are interested in supporting these worthwhile endeavors, please consider donating through our

Facebook fundraising page if you are on Facebook (we pay no fees through Facebook):

https://www.facebook.com/donate/187176190048775/

Or

Our Square Donation page (we pay a small transaction fee through Square):

 https://checkout.square.site/merchant/MLAC21JKV6XNH/checkout/CEXZLRNNSBLFPFI5H4FIF2KH

Thank you for being Nevadans with me!

Sondra