Welcome to the twenty first edition of the FundBase newsletter featuring five new and exciting grants. To see the other 2,601 grants that are listed on our database search now.

Primary Industries Youth Development Fund
Healthy Queensland Awards
EcoLiving Grants Program
Education Tax Refund
Nike-Changemakers Collaborative Competition

Primary Industries Youth Development Fund
This fund offers support for projects to improve the leadership and representative capacity of young people entering or involved in primary industries, particularly in the context of the challenges and opportunities in these industries as a result of a changing climate.

The department is now seeking applications for eligible projects for young people to support activities that aim to:
• build and share knowledge and experience
• increase access to planning tools and resources
• develop leadership and management skills
• develop pathways to increase participation in primary industries
• develop skills to contribute more effectively to government and industry decision making
• build networks among rural, regional and remote Australians.
These activities could be conducted via workshops, seminars, conferences or industry events or through other innovative mechanisms. Grants of up to $50,000 are available.

The department does not use a single definition of a 'young person'. However, in assessing applications, priority will be given to activities which focus on the 18-25 age group and activities for people aged 15-30 will be considered.

Organisations involved in agriculture, fisheries and forestry at the local, regional or national level are eligible to apply.

Applications are open now and close 5 pm AEDST, Monday, 2 March 2009.

Healthy Queensland Awards
The Queensland Government has set an ambitious target to make Queenslanders Australia's healthiest people. The Queensland Government's Healthy Queensland Awards are helping to achieve this as an annual state-wide competition to find Queensland's healthiest community, Queensland's healthiest school and Queensland's healthiest workplace.

All communities, schools and workplaces are encouraged to enter.

For example, entrants could include:
• streets
• community groups
• clubs and associations
• neighborhood centres
• local government
• schools
• small businesses
• charities
• corporations
Winners will share in a prize pool totaling $1 million for communities, $500,000 for schools and $100,000 for workplaces.

Prize money will go towards "healthy" infrastructure such as:
• walking and cycling paths
• basketball court
• shade structures
• sport and recreation equipment
• policies that make healthy choices the easy choices
• programs that promote health and wellbeing
• Competition guidelines
Entries close 27 March 2009.

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EcoLiving Grants Program

The EcoLiving Grants Program is designed to build the capacity of households and communities to respond to the impacts of climate change and sustainability issues. The program provides funding to assist development of EcoLiving Centres to support households and communities reduce everyday environmental impacts by:
• helping households overcome barriers to change
• providing locally relevant information and learning programs
• working together with a range of community members, organisations and businesses to help achieve the changes needed
• demonstrating sustainable technologies and practices.
Applications to the EcoLiving Grants Program Round Two are now open and close at 2pm, Thursday 19 March 2009.

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Education Tax Refund

By keeping their receipts, eligible families will be able to claim a 50 per cent refund every year for key education expenses up to:
• $750 for each child undertaking primary studies (maximum refund of $375 per child, per year); and
• $1,500 for each child undertaking secondary studies (maximum refund of $750 per child, per year).
Where a family has educational costs in excess of the refund limit, these costs can be carried over to the next financial year.

Parents entitled to Family Tax Benefit (FTB) Part A for children in primary or secondary school for the relevant financial year are eligible for the Education Tax Refund are eligible to apply.

Parents are also eligible if they have children in primary or secondary school who would be eligible children for FTB Part A purposes, but for the fact that the child receives other payments or allowances. Parents will then be able to claim 50 per cent of these expenses through their tax return at the end of the financial year. For those who are not required to complete an income tax return, a separate form will be available from the Australian Taxation Office.

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Nike-Changemakers, "Gamechangers: Change the Game for Women in Sport" Collaborative Competition

This competition aims to find innovative solutions and catalyze a community of changemakers around the use of sport to improve community, accelerate development and drive social change for girls and women.

The competition is open to all types of organizations (charitable organizations, private companies, or public entities) from all countries. It considers all entries that:
• Reflect the theme of the competition: Change the Game for Women in Sport. The scope of the competition is to identify innovative solutions that use sport to improve community, accelerate development and drive social change.
• Are beyond the stage of idea, concept, or research, and, at a minimum, are at the demonstration stage and indicate success.
The winners of this Changemakers Collaborative Competition will be those entries that best meet the following criteria:
• Innovation: This is the knock-out test; if the work is not innovative the judges will not give it high rankings.
• Social Impact: It is important that the innovation has begun to have an impact on the field it addresses. Some innovations will have proven success at a small level, while others will have scaled to engage millions of people. Regardless of the level of demonstrated impact, it is important to see that the innovation has the ability to be applied in the U.S. and other countries. This will be judged by considering the scale strategy, ability to be replicated, clear how-tos, and a map to reach the big goals.
• Sustainability: For an innovation to be truly effective it must have a plan for how it will acquire financial and other bases of support for the long-term.
Online competition submissions for the Changemakers Global Prize are accepted until February 25, 2009 at 6:00pm, U.S. Eastern Daylight Time.

There are three main phases in the Changemakers:
1. Global Prize Entry Stage, which closes February 25, 2009
2. Online Review and Judging until March 31, 2009
3. Voting by April 15, 2009. The Changemakers community votes online to select the three award winners from the field of finalists.
The Changemakers Collaborative Competition winners, the three finalists that receive the most votes will each receive a cash prize of US$5,000. There are other additional prizes such as a camcorders and digital cameras (Equal value of US $1000) and a Nike Foundation Prize of $5000 for the submission that best utilizes sport as a powerful tool for the economic and social empowerment of adolescent girls in the developing world.

For a range of other grants that could be used in conjunction with these to strengthen your application, search FundBase now.