Dartmouth's Lloyd Center for the Environment has received a financial boost with a $20,000 grant from the Massachusetts Environmental Trust, which will be used to expand the Center’s Climate Science Learning Project (CSLP), an interactive elementary school science teaching model.

“We are thrilled to receive this grant from the Massachusetts Environmental Trust (MET),” said Lloyd Center Executive Director, Rachel Stronach in a press release. “The funding we receive from MET will go a long way to educate students and community members alike.”

According to MET Program Director Bill Hinkley, the Trust will provide roughly $500,000 in grants to 12 organizations this year, thanks to motorists who choose to purchase one of the Trust’s specialty license plates.

Last year, the Lloyd Center for the Environment reached 81 classrooms serving low-income children and families in Fall River and New Bedford, schools whose students would not have been able to participate without external support. A total of 57 fifth-grade classes and 24 third-grade classes benefitted last year.

This number will increase in fiscal year 2017 as the Lloyd Center expands in New Bedford to increase coverage. Year two of a two-year pilot program will introduce interactive, web-based learning tools that will provide access to information about the effects of climate change on biodiversity in all 100 CSLP classrooms. It will also provide these tools to town planners, local residents, and teachers statewide and nationally.

The MET benefits from the fees associated with following specialty license plates: The Right Whale and Roseate Terns, The Leaping Brook Trout, and the Blackstone Valley Mill. The standard registration fee for a Massachusetts plate is $60. The special plate fee is an additional $40. A total of $28 is tax-deductible and $12 is to manufacture the plate. The total first-time cost of a Specialty Plate is $100. There is a renewal fee of $100 every two years.

For more information, visit www.mass.gov/eea/met.

The nonprofit Lloyd Center, located at 430 Potomska Road, was founded in 1978. It offers more than five miles of walking trails, the “Bridge to Discovery” dock on the Slocum River, vernal pools, oak-hickory forest, freshwater wetlands, salt marsh, estuary views, and is home to two injured raptors, a screech owl and red-shouldered hawk. Trails are open from dawn to dusk, seven days a week. For more information, visit www.lloydcenter.org or call 508-990-0505.