EARTH DAYS OF SERVICE: RESTORING THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT
	Organization: Lower Merion Conservancy    Date Posted: 03/17/09    Originally Published: 02/16/09
	Contact: Mike Weilbacher / 610-645-9030     mike@dragonfly.org Short Description: Earth Day returns on Wednesday, April 22. For its 39th anniversary, a coalition of environmental nonprofits and service organizations representing thousands of members throughout the region are joining together to promote Earth Days of Service. GPEN.org will be jointly promoting the events and offering a central hub of what is going on where for the coalition. Persons, groups or organizations interested in volunteering their time or adding their organization to the coalition can do so by visiting GPEN's Home Page and following the links in the Green Box. Long Description: Anytime during the month of April, participating nonprofits offer the community opportunities for environmental service: trash clean-ups, invasive vine removals, bird counts, stream monitorings, tree plantings, etc. The possibilities are as endless as our organizations’ respective mission statements are. The events will be jointly promoted on the website of the Greater Philadelphia Environmental Network, www.gpen.org. Each event on the GPEN calendar will be linked to its sponsor organization’s web site, and participating organizations will be given a hot button to link to the group calendar. But there’s a twist! Each organization adds its event to the GPEN listing, and commits a number of service hours to the coalition. A clean-up at a park with 100 people working two hours means 200 volunteer hours of service. The coalition, in turn, will be accumulating the names of participating organizations and tallying the total pledged volunteer hours for coalition members. To promote the month to newspapers, TV, and radio, the coalition will release a list of participating groups, the number of members these groups represent, and the number of hours these groups have pledged to greening the region. Just as April starts, we’ll assemble a group of nonprofit executives to kick off the month with a ceremonial event at one of our sites, formally releasing the coalition list. We want the resulting press to drive additional participants to the GPEN calendar—and to our organizations. The resulting photo could be used by any organization in the coalition. And it might just be the largest gathering of nonprofit executives ever! To join, simply email Mike Weilbacher, executive director of the Lower Merion Conservancy, at mike@dragonfly.org. His phone number is 610-645-9030. Give him your group’s name, web site URL, your contact person, the number of members your group represents, and number of volunteer hours you are pledging. There are very few rules to this project. The event(s) you add to the list should occur in April, involve service hours, and be free. Fundraisers and festivals are appropriate only if they have a service component. (Many of us, for example, present plant sales; list these if there is a free service component.) The events you offer could easily be ones your organization already presents, so this effort does not result in additional work—just additional promotion. However, some organizations might be inspired to invent new programs to take advantage of this opportunity, or partner with an existing nonprofit to increase the visibility of each. That’s the bottom line: we are looking to present a unified coalition of environmental groups offering hundreds of events for thousands of hours, resulting in a higher profile and more publicity for our work. Thus far, almost 20 groups with more than 5,000 members have pledged more than 7,000 hours of service. We hope you will join the coalition. Be sure to visit the Earth Day Events & Orgs tabs on the Home Page of GPEN.org to see a list of volunteer events or organizations in the coalition. Call or email Mike anytime with questions or for information on joining the coalition. Contact the respective organization you are interested in volunteering with for more information on their volunteer opportunity. Originally Published: 02/16/09