Mission
The Henry David Thoreau Foundation is a catalyst to action. We invest in the future of our planet by providing scholarships and grants to encourage, support, and sustain the work of young environmental leaders.
Since 1999 the Thoreau Foundation has provided more than $7 million to support environmental work. Each year we award scholarships to outstanding Massachusetts high school seniors – the next wave of environmental leaders who will pursue interdisciplinary environmental studies in college and beyond. We also fund visionary programs at U.S. colleges and universities, forging alliances with professors, strengthening our environmental network, and extending our impact.
Today, nearly two hundred Henry David Thoreau Scholar alumni are working around the world, seeking functional solutions to local and global environmental challenges. More than thirty Thoreau Scholars are currently earning undergraduate degrees, the best and the brightest of recent Massachusetts high school graduates assisted by the foundation’s four-year scholarships. And dozens of ground-breaking collegiate initiatives have been incubated and accelerated through our faculty grants.
Meet Our Scholars
As an environmental historian, I try to make obvious the overlooked ecological relationships—often hidden—that have built the world we live in today. My research examines the role that commercial chemists played across the 20th century in transforming what domestic workers and homemakers expected ‘cleanness’ to mean . . . to look like, feel like, and smell like. Though we often think about the impacts of industrialization on downstream ecosystems or in factories, my research invites readers to consider what industrialization has meant for nature right where we live: in our homes and in our bodies.