SARASOTA, Florida (WWSB) – Celebrating today focusing on a green future for Sarasota County. Partners for green Spaces announces a $ 375,000 grant secured by the Gulf coast Community Foundation and the Charles and Margery Barancik Foundation. The money will be used to focus on improving energy efficiency and sustainability for at least three nonprofits, including Children’s First, Historic Spanish Point and Harvest House.

“It could be everything from going from plastics to paper-based disposable use products, it could be everything from insulation to weather Stripping, it could be solar panels,” said John Thaxton, senior Vice President of community investment for the Gulf coast community Fund.

The goal is for these groups to save a lot of money and use that money to their advantage. Girls Inc in Sarasota is a Prime example of this. They currently have the largest solar array in the County. They recently added 565 solar panels on roofs, which is expected to save the organization up to $ 20,000 over the next year.

“We’re able to take that money and put it back into programs so it makes us serve more girls every year,” Angie stringer, CEO of Girls Inc. Sarasota County. –But it also gives us an opportunity to teach girls how important it is to preserve and be sustainable in their community.”

One of the organizations that benefits from this initiative for the protection of crops across the whole community, is “Harvest home”. They tell us that they are very excited to be part of this pilot program, helping them to be smarter and be greener.

“We weren’t focused so much on green efficiency before getting involved in this,” said Erin Maloy, Executive Director of harvest House. “I think we had the misconception that a lot of people do it just takes too much time, too much money, and through the audit we learned there Are a lot of things you can do that are easy, that are cheap, will actually save you money.”

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