La PORTE COUNTY — Five shoreline community foundations announced on April 5 they are coming together to join the Great Lakes One Water Partnership, a new effort designed to help communities in six regions, around the Great Lakes, develop and implement projects that will secure the region’s water future.
“Unity Foundation is excited to build on the work we’ve been doing since 2003 around protecting Lake Michigan,” said Maggi Spartz, Unity Foundation President.
The Great Lakes One Water Partnership is a multi-year, basin-wide initiative supported by the Great Lakes Protection Fund and the Council of Michigan Foundations.
The project will support these five shoreline community foundations as force multipliers to advance a new era of water infrastructure management for the benefit of people and businesses in the southwest region of Lake Michigan.
With $1 million in seed funding from the Great Lakes Protection Fund, the Council of Michigan Foundations and a team of water experts will be raising more than $4 million to coordinate nearly 30 community foundations in six regions surrounding the Great Lakes, in the United States and Canada.
The five community foundations in the Illinois and Indiana region, will be focused on the southwest corner of Lake Michigan, stretching from Evanston, Illinois to the Indiana border with Michigan.
Together, the community foundations have created a team of water management and watershed experts from their region to capitalize on this unprecedented partnership and identify innovative opportunities to effect real change on water resources in their region.