Walder Foundation

Congrats to 2024 Platform Award recipient Robyn Mineko Williams on being included in the Chicago Reader's #AAPIMonth spotlight featuring Asian American artists who are nourishing the performing arts landscape in Chicago and beyond! 💃 Robyn's 2024 work Hisako’s House, inspired by her grandmother’s experiences in an American internment camp in the 1940s, was recently transformed for an installation at SKF Konstnärshuset in Stockholm, Sweden. The installation opens tomorrow and runs through June 13. 📰 Read more about Robyn and this installation in the Chicago Reader: https://lnkd.in/g_QzCb_4 ➡️ Learn more about Walder Foundation's Platform Awards: platformawards.org

Chicago faces a critical need for a robust and diverse pipeline of immigration legal advocates, especially as demand grows and workforce shortages intensify. The Resurrection Project’s Colibrí Fellowship, Immigrant Justice Corps, and DePaul University College of Law’s Asylum & Immigration Law Clinic are helping recruit, train, and mentor the next generation of legal professionals who will sustain this work for years to come. 🔗 Read more about some Chicago area organizations' efforts and Walder Foundation’s legal ecosystem funding strategies: https://lnkd.in/eSG9Uu8F 🤩 Receive stories like this in your inbox: https://lnkd.in/gsYsDshE

2022 Biota Awardee Noé U. de la Sancha has been selected as a 2026-2027 U.S. Fulbright Scholar! With this grant, Dr. de la Sancha will continue his 20-plus years of research in Paraguay, studying the affects of deforestation on small mammals and biodiversity as a whole. This work builds on research funded through Walder Foundation’s Biota Awards program. Congrats, Noé! Read more: https://lnkd.in/gc7igjhE Learn more about Noé’s research: https://lnkd.in/gx_Ye-Vq

Sharing some good news for Chicagoans and Hoosiers 🌱💚🌱 NFWF and partners announced four projects selected to receive $1.2 million in grant funding to enhance habitat and improve water quality in Chicago-Calumet region. https://loom.ly/YggrNyY The Chi-Cal River Fund is a partnership among NFWF and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), USDA Forest Service, BNSF Railway, Cleveland-Cliffs, Crown Family Philanthropies, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Hunter Family Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, and the Walder Foundation. 📷: Monarch butterfly on swamp milkweed | Photo credit: C A Milledge III/Getty

Honored to share that I've been selected as a 2026–2027 U.S. Fulbright Scholar! 🎉 Fulbright Association The Fulbright Program Based at Tapyta Reserve in the Interior Atlantic Forest, our team will use VirScan, a platform capable of screening for over 68,000 viruses, to map how pathogens move between wildlife, livestock, and local communities along the deforestation frontier. This follows work funded by the Walder Foundation. At its heart, this is a host-pathogen interactions research program. We are asking how host physiology, stress hormones, immune competence, body condition, shapes susceptibility and exposure to pathogens like arenaviruses, hantaviruses, tick-borne bacteria, and other zoonotic pathogens across a gradient of habitat disturbance. VirScan gives us an unprecedented serological window into those dynamics at the community level, turning antibody profiles into ecological data. This is a full-circle moment for me. I first went to Paraguay on a Fulbright as a graduate student. That trip changed the course of my research, and my life. I'm deeply grateful to be returning under this award, hosted by Fundación Moisés Bertoni and CEDIC. This July, I'll be heading back to Paraguay — this time with my family in tow — to continue research I've been building toward for more than 20 years. Thank you to my colleagues at DePaul University, the College of Science and Health, and everyone who has been part of this journey. 🔗 Full story below. #Fulbright #HostPathogenInteractions #OneHealth #WildlifeDisease #Paraguay #ZoonoticDisease #VirScan #SerologyEcology #Immunology #Microbiology

💧 Tackling flooding takes more than rain gardens. Aligned systems, shared data, and community leadership are necessary. Meet some organizations that are strengthening Chicago’s green stormwater infrastructure by aligning systems, collecting and sharing data, and engaging communities: ➡️Alliance for the Great Lakes ➡️Chicago Department of Environment ➡️Healthy Schools Campaign ➡️Metropolitan Planning Council 🔗 Read more: https://lnkd.in/gM6ZTqEV 🤩 Receive stories like this in your inbox: https://lnkd.in/gsYsDshE

Diaspora-led and community-based organizations are working to expand their immigration legal services programs to be able to take on complex immigration law. Groups like United African Organization, Indo-American Center, Instituto del Progreso Latino, and Syrian Community Network are working to ensure that high‑quality legal services are available in trusted spaces where community members already feel supported. 🔗 Read more about how these organizations are responding to a complex legal landscape: https://lnkd.in/eSG9Uu8F 🤩 Receive stories like this in your inbox: https://lnkd.in/gsYsDshE

In an #EarthDay interview with ABC 7 Chicago, Biota Awardee Liza Lehrer of Lincoln Park Zoo's Urban Wildlife Institute was highlighted, providing education about the positive impacts bats have on the agricultural industry and sharing some concerns about how Chicago's built environment can harm bats. 🦇 Bats play a vital role in our city — controlling insects, supporting ecosystems, and quietly working behind the scenes to keep our urban environment healthy. Lehrer's research focuses on understanding how we can create cities as places where wildlife, including bats, can thrive. 🤩 Learn more about her efforts and the efforts of fellow Biota Award recipients that are working toward enhancing biodiversity and conservation efforts in Chicago and beyond at biotaawards.org. Interview: https://lnkd.in/euPqAXuW

A global event takes collaboration. Chicago’s cultural community has stepped up. 🤝🎵 In one week, Chicago will host International Jazz Day! Take a look at the positive social and economic impact anticipated for Chicago. #JazzDay 🔗 Read more: https://lnkd.in/gvMwQpvx 🤩 Receive stories like this in your inbox: https://lnkd.in/gsYsDshE