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Our Challenge Awaits!
ISEA hosted a wonderful event at Black Star Farms on May 21st to kick off our Get on Board Campaign. The event was partially underwritten by ISEA’s Board of Directors, past and present. I believe everyone agreed that the venue in the old barn at Black Star Farms was fantastic.
The truly amazing part of this evening was the fact that we booked 140 participants for this event in less than 24 hours. While that was amazing, we are somewhat saddened by the fact that so many members of the ISEA family were not able to secure one of the 140 seats. As a result, I would like to provide a quick overview of this important meeting in this month’s newsletter.
First and foremost, this event was about bringing the ISEA family together to enjoy good stories, food, and to learn about ISEA’s big plans. What big plans you might ask? ISEA’s big plans involve focusing squarely on impacting an increasing number of individuals with our important mission of inspiring Great Lakes curiosity, stewardship, and passion. The reality is that our goal of protecting the Great Lakes through education is more important today than it was 25 years ago. We all know that 20% of the world’s surface fresh water resides in our Great Lakes. That fact alone speaks to the importance of our work, but you may also agree that some of these other facts support the idea that what we do is important!
- STEM (science, math, engineering, technology) jobs are expected to grow faster than all other occupations from 2012-2022. ISEA inspires students to pursue careers in the STEM fields.
- 50% of the world’s population will live in high water stress by 2030. Solutions to big problems always begin with education.
- The Great Lakes region boasts the world’s 4th largest economy, with a combined GDP of $4.7 trillion. ISEA’s work has tremendous economic significance.
- Outflows from the Great Lakes are relatively small so pollutants that enter the Great Lakes are retained and become more concentrated with time. ISEA monitors the health of the Great Lakes through the research completed during our programs. Participants are part of this research process.
I believe strongly that if you do important work, you should do it with as many people and in the best manner possible. We highly subsidize the cost of our programs because we don’t want to limit the number of individuals we can reach. In order to reach more, we will need to subsidize more. Rather than asking you for more, we’re asking you to find others to Get Onboard with ISEA. We are fortunate that our long-term partner, The Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation, has provided ISEA with a $75,000 challenge grant to obtain new support to increase our impact. For every dollar donated to ISEA by a new donor, The Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation will match it up to $75,000. We estimate that reaching this goal will take more than 300 new donors to ISEA. It will be impossible to attract 300+ new donors to ISEA without your help and support.
ISEA is asking you to help us attract new supporters and we’ve created several tools for you to do so. First, please check out the Get On Board Campaign page on our website at http://schoolship.org/about-isea/get-onboard-campaign/. This page could be shared with your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, etc. It includes a wonderful brochure that you can email to others to share about all of the important things ISEA does. We also have physical copies of this brochure in the office if you’d like to mail or hand deliver them to anyone. Lastly, we will be offering several opportunities throughout the year to invite a potential volunteer/donor to sail with you aboard Inland Seas at not cost to you or them. These sails are designed to give participants an idea about what we do and why we do it. Please consider inviting a guest for our first Friendraiser sail of the season on June 20th at 7:00 pm. Call the office at 271-3077 to get registered for this free event.
Spring Schoolship season is just about over and we will quickly be switching gears to our busy summer season. We have some wonderful trips/programs planned for the summer. Hopefully you will be able to find some time to enjoy one of these programs. We will be unveiling our new microplastics themed sail. It’s a great opportunity to learn about this new topic related to the Great Lakes. Check out our summer schedule to learn more.
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Alliance for the Great Lakes Seminar – June 11th
Inland Seas Education Association is hosting a seminar on Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 7:00 p.m., with Jamie Cross, Alliance for the Great Lakes Adopt-a-Beach™, to learn how volunteers and Great Lakes researchers are identifying and changing the way we think of our own impacts on the Great Lakes and the products we use every day.
For more information: click here
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