Be the Change Project (BTC) is a neighborhood-based nonprofit focused on sustainability, service, and community uplift.  Since BTC’s inception in 2011, our efforts have focused on improving the landscape and lives of our neighbors by bringing art, events, and education to northeast Reno. Beginning in 2012, BTC has raised funds for and directed six art projects on Wedekind Road. One small mural was done entirely with students at High Desert Montessori School.  Another involved stipends for ten teens to learn the basics of mural painting. A third involved youth arrested for tagging who did their community service painting a mural. In 2019, we were awarded Reno’s Art Belongs Here grant and worked with a local artist to install a 4,000 square foot mural at the 580 freeway underpass on Wedekind. 

BTC’s other past and ongoing efforts include food collection and distribution to needy families twice weekly since 2012, plants and classes for beginning gardeners, founding Reno Garlic Fest in 2017, creating the Pat Baker Park Music Series in 2015, creating Nevada’s first and only food waste collection business, distributing 15,000 articles of clothing through partnership with Patagonia, and conducting the first micropastics testing of the Truckee River.