great rivers greenway [mo]
2019 giving while living regional grant: $1,800

Woodard & Curran Foundation’s $1,800 grant helped Great Rivers Greenway’s conservation efforts along the St. Vincent Greenway and the Gravois Greenway.

Great Rivers Greenway has a robust volunteer program that engages more than 3,000 volunteers each year to help with greenway cleanup and conservation workdays. Volunteers from 8 to 80 years of age donate their time to help clean up trash along the creeks and river beds and clear out honeysuckle bushes, invasive vines and underbrush and prepare the land for the planting of native species the following Spring.

The Greenway Guides are a group of men who are employed to do conservation work along the Mississippi Greenway and to provide assistance to the trail users on the weekends. The Greenway Guides is a collaborative initiative with the Save our Sons program at the Urban League of St. Louis, employing economically disadvantaged men and providing them with work skill training. Since the Mississippi Greenway has been closed due to flooding, this group of 5 men has been hard at work along other greenways building pollinator gardens and doing maintenance such as the clearing of invasive species and planting native plantings.

Woodard & Curran Foundation’s Giving While Living Grant helped purchase the plants and supplies used to establish gardens and to revive the wetlands along the St. Vincent and Gravois Greenways. Seven volunteers from Woodard & Curran, Inc. helped clear a half acre area along the Centennial Greenway in St. Charles.

As volunteers are working along the greenways they are providing a valuable addition to conservation efforts and learning how to clear and restore a woodland or wetland area.

Thank you to Monica Dannemann and Stephen Lindemann, from Woodard & Curran, Inc.’s St. Charles, MO, office, who nominated Great Rivers Greenway for a Foundation Giving While Living Regional Grant.