From our friends at the SF Surfrider chapter:
Happy Holidays everyone! It’s been quite the year for Surfrider’s San Francisco chapter, and many thanks go out to those of you who were involved. We hope you have a warm and happy holiday season. Incase you’re interested, here are a few of the major milestones and highlights from our chapter in 2009:
2009 Highlights
- Beach cleanups:
- Over 26 cleanups, with an estimated 300 bags of trash removed from Ocean Beach
- Our Education committee:
- Went from two members to seven
- Visited seven schools in 2009
- Already has four more lined up for 2010
- Began updating the National education curriculum
- And are developing a surf class program for the Bay Area
- Our Plant Don’t Pave and Ocean Friendly Gardens Programs:
- Received two SF city grants to help beautify the Sunset by planting native species, reducing urban runoff and ultimately curbing ocean pollution.
- Broke ground on the community-driven Ocean Friendly Garden project, exhibiting responsible and native planting in the local community.
- Our Music Outreach Program attended 10 local music shows, 2 film events, and 1 festival @ Now and Zen. It also got the attention of our National headquarters, garnering shout-outs from Surfrider CEO Jim Moriarty for its success.
- Our chapter also attended several other events, including Outside Lands, Beach Chalet fundraisers, the Second Annual Womens Paddle-out at OB, International Surfing Day, a few Riptide events, It’s About Sealife, and the offshore oil drilling hearings in San Francisco.
- We maintained dog bag dispensers along Ocean Beach (but you residents are too quick to use those things! contact us to help!)
- Offset our chapter’s carbon footprint, and increased our own environmental awareness by making cleanups and events greener
- Hosted CA chapter conference AGAIN!
- Our chapter was ready to mobilize on the Dubai Star oil spill, which luckily wasn’t nearly as bad as the Cosco Busan.
- Communications: New website, 8 newsletters and several event updates, 2 Making Waves Submissions, Myspace, facebook, and twitter presences.
- Our plastic committee leader Kathleen Egan won a trip to Alaska for her work building a life-sized, plastic wave from plastic trash;
- The plastic subcommittee is thriving, and working to chronicle plastic on the beaches and push local Sunset district merchants to cut plastic use
Thanks again for all your hard work! We hope to see YOU involved in one of our events or programs in 2010!
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