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Our Story
Great Plains Restoration Council (GPRC) is headquartered in Houston, TX. GPRC became a formal 501(c) 3 non-profit organization in October 1999. GPRC was first founded in 1997 by Jarid Manos during prairie dog rescues while simultaneously working in physical therapy and exercise physiology to help people heal trauma, injury, and illness through holistic recovery approaches. Learn more about GPRC.
Mission Statement: Great Plains Restoration Council works to restore and protect our shattered prairies and plains through developing youth leaders in Ecological Health. Protecting wild nature is a matter of public health, and participating in its hands-on recovery offers therapeutic modalities for many social and physical ills.
Restoration Not Incarceration� and Plains Youth InterACTION�: The Positive Health Impact for People and Prairies
Many young people have no idea that anything they do has any real cause or effect good or bad. �Things just happen.� �The world just is.� We treat our bodies and the planet as if it�s all �just there�. And certainly, few damaged young people have any understanding that their own lives could ever make any positive change or difference to the world. When a young person produces a positive ripple effect of health by his or her own hands and mind for the very first time, a whole new world opens.
Serious conservation work: Not just involved in �busy work� at any location, GPRC participants produce targeted high value ecological benefits helping save and restore some of North America�s rarest and most threatened or damaged ecosystems while simultaneously healing their own conflicts, threats and damage. The Greater Houston/Upper Texas Gulf Coast, Fort Worth, and the Southern High Plains hold some of these most threatened prairies.
Serious social work: Like twin strands of DNA, social work and ecological recovery and protection are intertwined. Supported by licensed master social workers, counselors, and mentors, youth and young adults who face multiple crises and trauma enter into a 3-tier Ecological Health training program certification process that first helps people stabilize their lives, then develop tools to thrive. See GPRC�s trademarked Life Wheel for a diagram of this process.
Your support for the Upper Texas Gulf Coastal Prairie will not only help one of the rarest and most endangered places stay alive but provide training, re-entry, and life stabilization for struggling people locally as well as, eventually, nationally once we get the Visiting Service Learning component set up.
Our Program: Restoration Not Incarceration� (RNI)
Ages 17-25. RNI targets the restoration of Greater Houston�s endangered native coastal prairie ecosystem in conjunction with rehabilitation of juveniles and adults who have been incarcerated. Many are currently homeless. RNI is a prairies-and-people recovery effort and new Green Jobs training initiative being designed to ultimately train hundreds of ex-offenders, probationers, and inmates in working groups. Future replication of RNI is planned for other locations in the grassland regions of Texas and New Mexico. RNI will also at some point be potentially available for other U.S. regions/ecosystems.
Learn more about Restoration Not Incarceration.
How You Can Help
We are in danger of losing the last 1% of the Coastal Praire. But, with your help we can not only save but restore this Garden of Eden. Please help us raise funds to jumpstart a brand new Coastal Prairie refuge on the Gulf of Mexico for people and animals.
PLEASE DONATE TODAY. We can�t do this without you. Foundation giving has decreased across the board, and great healing and deep social change will only be built with your help now.
Be sure and claim your perk! Or if you would prefer to not receive a perk and have the full donation go to GPRC, please note that in the Optional Message field when checking out.
All donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
PLEASE ALSO SPREAD THE WORD. SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY, CO-WORKERS, CHURCH OR OTHER PLACES OF WORSHIP, AND OTHERS.
It�s easy to set up a group and raise a larger amount of money together as a shared goal.
This is a fun way to give back, and also brings people together in service, which is a great thing for everybody.
And please don�t forget to use Facebook and Twitter. The Internet can be a powerful tool for social change and we need your help in utilizing its potential.
Ecological Health is the interdependent health of people, animals and ecosystems, and we want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to be part of this exciting rebirth!
More Details about the Conservation Purchase of Virgin Coastal Prairie Urban Remnant + Saltwater Country Tour: $15,000
Directly adjacent to Esteban Park is a rare remnant of high-quality native coastal prairie that�s in need of protection. We are working to acquire, permanently protect and add this site onto the Park. Your support will not only help us buy and protect the incredible richness and priceless biodiversity of this remnant Coastal Prairie site for people of all colors, cultures and communities, but secure this critical seed source for restoration efforts as we race to save the coastal prairie ecosystem from extinction. (Only 1% of the original coastal prairie remains alive!)
A 24 x 24 bronze plaque at the entrance to the Virgin Prairie will be dedicated permanently in your name or to that of a loved one.
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PLUS:
A PERSONAL GULF COAST TOUR:
Also included is an all-expenses paid 2 day, 1 night personal tour through GPRC�s Saltwater Country project area on the Upper Texas Gulf Coast, including the National Wildlife Refuges, where the prairie meets the sea, wild bison and red wolves used to roam, and countless migrating birds still come through each year.This area is rich in human culture as well that includes Karankawa and other native people, Spanish Conquistadors, the legendary Esteban the Moor, Anglo settlers, and longtime Creole/black history and Zydeco music.
Message from Jarid Manos, Founder & CEO, Great Plains Restoration Council
GPRC Volunteers CrewSo, let�s do this together. Let�s have LESS SADNESS and MORE EXHILARATION.
Nothing is more powerful than getting healthy and giving back.
A lot of us accept the future as �inevitable doom�, but we are working with you right here right now to show that even our next breath, our very next action, may ripple across 5,000 years with life and health.
Thanks so much. ECOLOGICAL HEALTH IS FOR EVERYONE. Even a year from now, you won�t believe how much difference your donation and your support would have made.
See you in the new millennium � where we are not accepting loss and destruction but rebuilding our lives and civilization as part of Nature, like science fiction coming into real life.
P.S. Don�t� forget to Tweet and Facebook about this campaign and your efforts regularly, including posting any updates or information or news you want to share or feel may be helpful. The more the better�getting the word out will make all the difference!!
Once again, thank you for caring about Earth and our children�s health and future, and thank you for walking alongside us as we work to get to a healthier place and time. There may be a lot of chaos and sadness in the world, but hands-on work right now can help heal and inspire people like never before.
Call 832-598-GPRC (4772) to join the GPRC Volunteers Crew. Your help is much appreciated!
