Posted October 14, 2026 at 10:24am by VDW Admin
Land Access and Opportunity Board Announces $870,000 in Community Resilience Hub Grants to 19 Projects Across Vermont
The Land Access and Opportunity Board (LAOB) is honored to announce 19 Community Resilience Hub Grants of up-to-$50,000 awarded to resilience hubs, community centers, nonprofits, and agencies across Vermont, totaling nearly $870,000. The Grants invest State resources into community initiatives that build peer and neighbor connections and strategic community infrastructure to strengthen our ability to survive disasters and emergencies.
Over the next year, LAOB will work with the 19 grantees in a Community of Practice to better connect towns and at-risk individuals with regional and statewide emergency preparedness resources. The Community of Practice brings community resilience organizers from across the state together, helping State and municipal emergency management extend their resources, particularly during recovery and resilience planning phases for which there is limited funding.
One grantee, Community Resilience Organizations (CROs), is implementing their Community Resilience Hub Toolkit, which defines community resilience as the “ability of a community to survive, respond, and adapt to disaster with an orientation towards thriving conditions.” Resilience hubs serve as centralized sources of information, support, and supplies for the community. For more information about the Community Resilience Hub Toolkit, visit:
With more frequent floods and natural disasters, community resilience is essential. In resilient communities, community members are there for each other, even as emergency services may be unable to reach you for at least 72 hours following a disaster. Information sharing, tool sharing, phone trees, and community trust strengthen communities’ response and recovery from emergencies. Grantee Margaret Woodruff, Director of the Charlotte Public Library, says their community resilience hub “create[s] stronger bonds in our community so that everyone is better connected and therefore better prepared to handle disruption and emergency situations.”
The Land Access and Opportunity Board was created under Act 182 of 2022 to engage with Vermont organizations and individuals to recommend new opportunities and improve access to woodlands, farmland, and land and home ownership for Vermonters from historically marginalized or disadvantaged communities, who continue to face barriers to land and home ownership. As an act of Vermont State Law, the LAOB belongs to all Vermonters.