The Strong Center

The Strong Center originally started life as St. Margaret's House, an Episcopal school centered on training women to become deaconesses in the Episcopal Church. When the National Episcopal Church began to ordain women as priests in the 1960s, the school was no longer needed and was closed. It was followed by the Berkeley Center for Human Interaction, a secular non-profit organization that held seminars on a variety of environmental and ecological topics. In 1979, the organization was renamed The Strong Center, with the focus shifted to the production of audio tapes. They featured interviews with renowned members of the environmental community and were distributed for use in public broadcasting. In the mid-1980s, The Strong Center was morphed into the Strong Foundation for Environmental Values, a private foundation that offers grants to ecologically-centric organizations.