Forum MNE

Podgorica
Montenegro

Fostering a culture of environmental stewardship and sustainable development requires engagement across many layers of a society. Forum MNE’s program Youth for Green Montenegro mobilizes young people to get involved with environmentalism and kick-starts local philanthropy within the business community. The organization raises awareness about environmental protection and reforestation with a network of 50 volunteers and engages more than 450 students from elementary, vocational, and high schools across the country, as well as sports and youth clubs. Local businesses and individuals are invited to donate funds for the purchase of saplings, which the participants plant together after learning more about local ecology.

One such reforesting action took place in Montenegro’s epicenter of pollution, the municipality of Pljevlja, which is the source much of the country’s industrial waste and home to its coal mining and lumber production. Forum MNE also organized similar events in five other municipalities in Montenegro. In total, participants planted 470 saplings between 2012 and 2015. Across the six municipalities, 113 donors, including businesses and institutions and organizations that promote social responsibility, helped purchase saplings.

In addition to local municipalities and schools, Youth for Green Montenegro partners with the national government’s Ministry of Tourism and Sustainable Development and the Center for Vocational Education, a smart strategy for an NGO in a region with a burgeoning ecotourism sector but also some of Europe’s highest youth unemployment.

Grants

$120,000
for
24 months
Awarded
For its project, International Youth Village
Renewable Energy and Healthy Environment
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Our online database includes grants made by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund over the past five years.