Telluride Nonprofits and Charities

Amazing non-profit! I am a thrilled grant recipient who has received an amazing electric recumbent bike which has greatly improved my quality of life! As a human who lives with a neuromuscular disease, I have been unable to do a sport of any kind for the past 4 years, as I am left with very little muscle strength and energy each day. This opportunity to be able to participate in a sport again through the use of this E-bike is truly such a huge boost to my daily morale and such a blessing! <br><br>100% recommend anyone with a disability in need of help to obtain adaptive sports equipment to reach out!

My 4th grader has been singing with Ms Rhonda since KG. She loves it. The concerts are amazing! She plans to continue all the way through 12th grade.

When I was young every Christmas I got a subscription to National Geographic Magazine. All year when each issue arrived I would squirrel away looking first at just the pictures, later reading and dreaming of far away places and the adventures I wanted to have. Now years later after some great epic moments, I appreciate that I have been so fortunate to attend and support the Telluride Mountainfilm festival. Over the years so many special guests, athletes, adventurers, activists, and attendees tell and share their passions and amazing stories. Mountainfilm brings us rare footage and shared moments that have astonished, frustrated, and filled me with awe. Yes I feel apart of something VERY special. And as a side note, really how wonderful that the yellow square from Nat. Geo magazine is still here, and that they are participating and still making a difference in my life. Thank you Mountainfilm staff and to everyone I have had the pleasure of meeting in line or at the festival.

Last year, during the collaborative short story unit that Telluride Mountain School humanities team runs every year, something clicked for an upper school student. A story about his childhood poured out of him—it was funny, sweet, sad, poignant, and our judges, a group of local writers, selected his story for one of the top prizes. Since then, he’s been on fire; not only about creative writing but about everything; he is literally getting straight A’s. <br> <br>In our honor’s group, he asked if we could please learn more grammar because he can’t stand when he reads something and doesn’t understand how to use it in his own writing. So, in addition to Madame Bovary, we ended up talking about the “em dash” for twenty minutes. In our regular English section, he’s come to me with easily ten drafts of his Hamlet paper, saying that he’s just so tired of writing overly simplistic literary papers. Every time he comes to find me or sends me a new email, he apologizes—“I’m so sorry to bug you again but….” and every time, I assure him that he’s not bugging me and we go through another draft. As a result, he now has a 3-part thesis on the corruption in the play and how it manifests in the “To Be or Not to Be” speech.

Loved everything but the terminology used to describe the sex workers in Telluride during the mining operation. They used “soiled doves” and “women of questionable virtue” to describe these women. It is not an issue of plaques being updated because there are “fun fact” plaques that say when a name is misspelled AND The Dixie Chicks plaque was already corrected to the “The Chicks”. The history of the sex workers goes on the describe them as “disease ridden”, never noting the diseases were from the mining workers who were cheating on their wives who they left to come to Telluride. It is obvious a very conservative man wrote these plaques and it needs to be updated. These women were members on the working class and mothers to children who grew up in Telluride. Fix the plaques!

As a community based conservation organization in Belize, we struggle to find the resources to effectively manage the marine protected area and natural resources entrusted to us. We compete with funding against larger, better known organizations, our limited funds can only be stretched so far, and have to be prioritized. Partnerships are important, filling gaps where we have neither the skills nor the finance to achieve what needs to be done. The partnership with LightHawk, and the aerial flights they have provided has given us the opportunity to advance our knowledge of one of the most important and endangered inhabitant of our protected area - the West Indian (Antillean) manatee. <br> <br>Starting from a vague idea of how manatees use the area, we now have maps and population counts, we know which areas they frequent and where the mating herds are found at different times of year. We know where we we are going to erect 'no wake' signs, and where we should prioritise patrols against unattended fishing nets, and where we should release rehabilitated animals. With only 800 to 1000 manatees estimated to be left in Belize, and with Belize recognized for having the majority of this endangered Antillean sub-species, we have now confirmed that Corozal Bay Wildlife Sanctuary has a significant role to play in the conservation of this species nationally, regionally and globally. <br> <br>Without LightHawk as a partner, we would not have been able to achieve this. LightHawk have provided an excellent service, with enthusiastic pilots willing to make the extra effort to ensure the aerial surveys are as effective as possible. They have been professional, helpful and provide an excellent service that helps us to ensure that we have the information we need to do a good job for endangered species conservation.