Support USEE - Letter from the New Director

Dear Supporters of Environmental Education,

This has been an exciting year for environmental education (EE) in Utah. The Utah Society for Environmental Education (USEE) staff, board, members, and volunteers have taken great strides in our efforts to provide statewide leadership that expands the quality, scope, and effectiveness of environmental education in our state.

Thanks in large part to all of our supporters in 2009, USEE:

• Increased the participation at our Annual Conference to over 120 participants (including 15 students) and provided a Regional Component enhancing EE efforts throughout the West;
• Expanded Project Learning Tree to reach with over 300 teachers and college students;
• Worked with students to produce amazing art through the 1st Annual Salt Lake City Squatters Recycled Materials Sculpture Contest;
• Taken over coordination of the Project WET program, which will bring additional water education workshops to Utah’s teachers;
• Compiled a Model Implementation Strategy for EE in Utah based on the comments and needs of over 1000 teachers and organizations in Utah;
• Increased our membership by over 50% since last year to 93 individuals and 31 organizations. Working with these members is the highlight of every day here in the office! (We just need 7 more to meet our goal of 100 individuals by the end of the year… are YOU a member?)
  

As you may know, our Executive Director, Jason Taylor, has left USEE to pursue new adventures in life and I am filling in as Interim Executive Director. With Jason moving on from USEE, I have some pretty big shoes to fill, but I am confident we will continue to provide the same great service to the community and will promote EE throughout Utah as we did before because of the wonderful support you all provide. Over the next year finances are going to be tough for everyone, including individuals and non profits, but we all must keep our eye on the goal, which is providing high quality information and education about the environment to the citizens of Utah. USEE's role as a professional organization is to help Environmental Educators and Organizations shine through these challenging times, but we can only do this with the support of our community.

If Environmental Education is important to you, and as you reflect on what you are able to give this season, I hope that you consider making an end of year donation to USEE. You can even make a donation in honor of someone else, which would be a great holiday gift! No amount is too small to help and all donations are tax deductible.

Online donations to USEE can be made at https://usee.ejoinme.org/MyPages/DonationPage/tabid/58490/Default.aspx

Thank you for all that you do,

Andree’ Walker Bravo
Interim Executive Director