English In Action Wins Blue Tent Giving Tree Grant

We're excited to announce that the Blue Tent Giving Tree Committee recently awarded a $1,000 grant to the Roaring Fork Valley's English In Action. Read below for more about how our grant will help this dynamic organization.

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Lara S. Beaulieu Executive Director,
English In Action

English In Action helps immigrant adults in the Roaring Fork Valley develop the language and leadership skills they need to participate fully as workers, parents and community members.  Our primary program is a one-on-one tutoring program where volunteer community members help immigrants develop their language skills and serve as liaisons to ease the transition to living in a new culture.

The need for our program is significant—last year we served 87 students, but we have a waiting list that is 8-12 months long. As a small non-profit organization, finding the funds to support our work is always a challenge. Currently, we simply do not have the staff resources to meet demand for our work.

So, when we received an email this summer from Blue Tent Marketing to apply to the Giving Tree Program, we jumped at the opportunity. The application was easily to complete, and we were pleased to hear a few weeks later that Giving Tree Committee had selected us as one of two finalists and that they would like to meet with us. Four committee members came to visit our program center in El Jebel. This was a rare opportunity to share more information with the committee about the work that we do and to make a personal connection. Two of our students were able to attend the meeting and talk about the importance of learning English in their own lives. These two students have both worked very hard to learn English and this skill is creating many opportunities in their lives.

English In Action is honored to be a recipient of a Giving Tree grant. We are also very excited that we were offered assistance with designing an e-newsletter—a important tool in spreading the work about what we do, which was not within our current budget.

Perhaps the most important benefit of this process was the opportunity to partner with Blue Tent Marketing and meet their staff. It is rare that for-profit and non-profit organizations are able to collaborate in this way and we applaud Blue Tent for making social consciousness and community involvement such an important part of what they do!

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At Blue Tent Marketing, we believe that it’s important to find meaningful ways to give back to the community and the environment. To this end, we’ve created The Blue Tent Giving Tree – named in honor of the late Shel Silverstein’s famous book, “The Giving Tree.”

The Blue Tent Giving Tree is a corporate foundation, built upon the beliefs and ethical standards set forth by members of Blue Tent Marketing. The founding committee has laid the foundation and created the framework by which the committee will continue to grow and evolve as influenced by new members and perspectives into the foreseeable future.