Community Roundup

Vermont Flood Response and Recovery Fund gives over $1 million to help homes, businesses

It’s difficult to make one’s way around the state without coming across scenes of communities still working to clean out homes and businesses, remove debris, and take stock of the full extent of the damage, said the Vermont Community Foundation in a release.

The foundation’s Vermont Flood Response and Recovery Fund 2023 awarded its second round of grants last week — more than $670,000 to organizations around the state. This brings the total grants awarded so far to over $1 million.

These grants will support nonprofits that are helping residents of flooded mobile home parks and assisting towns as they rent dumpsters to haul away immense piles of flood-related trash and debris. The money will cover emergency home repairs and transitional housing; and help farmers who lost an entire season of corn, berries, cut flowers and other products to a wave of water and mud.

All told, approximately $4.4 million ($2.8 million in gifts and $1.6 million in pledges) has come into the Vermont Flood Response and Recovery Fund 2023 since it opened for donations.

If you would like to speak with a member of the Vermont Community Foundation staff about how to make a gift, contact Stacie Fagan or 802-388-3355 extension 252. Or you can go here.

Help nominate Vermont’s next poet laureate
The Vermont Arts Council along with its partners, Vermont Humanities, Poetry Society of Vermont and Sundog Poetry invite you to submit nominations for the appointment of a new Vermont Poet Laureate.

Serving as Vermont’s ambassador for the art of poetry, the poet laureate is not only honored for their own work and accomplishments but can raise awareness and a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.

All nominations are welcome, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, cultural heritage, socio-economic background, physical ability or poetic sub-genre in the pursuit of the poet laureate being representative of the rich and diverse cultures of poetry in the state of Vermont. Self-nominations are also eligible. Nomination deadline is Oct. 30.

For more information about the Vermont Poet Laureate position, criteria and selection process, and the online nomination form, visit the Vermont Poet Laureate webpage.

Vermont Historical Society creating flood of 2023 archive
The Vermont Historical Society has created a new initiative to preserve images and documents pertaining to the historic floods that severely impacted the state in July 2023. Members of the public are invited to submit their photographs, audio and video recordings, written memories, and other relevant documents to the flood of 2023 archive on the society’s website, which will preserve them for future Vermonters and scholars.

The Vermont Historical Society holds a considerable number of records of past floods in its collection, including images and video from the Flood of 1927, the Montpelier flood of 1992 and of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. These records are used by researchers, journalists and members of the public to recall and understand those events.

As part of this initiative, the society has also begun to expand the media collection for the Flood of 1927 on its archival portal, Digital Vermont, uploading dozens of photographs and scans of documents from VHS’s collection for the first time, making them more widely available to the public than ever before. The 1927 Flood in Vermont Collection can be found here.

Librarian Kate Phillips says, “This flood will drastically change the landscape of Vermont in ways we do not yet know. It is essential that we document the experiences of individuals and small businesses, as well as new directions in conversations about climate change and housing. We hope that careful documentation of this moment can help inform future decision-making.”

The Vermont Historical Society invites the public to submit their photographs, audio files, video recordings and other related documents to this crowdsourced archive, in order to preserve the memories of this tragic event for the future.

To submit files and view the full terms and conditions.

For information on physical items that the Vermont Historical Society is interested in adding to the library and museum collection.

For questions or troubleshooting, contact the society.