This November community leaders and practitioners from 7 Southeast communities gathered for two days to share their stories, goals, opportunities, and challenges faced working toward sustainable community development and resource management in Southeast Alaska.
Those individuals that attended this meeting actively participate in a collaborative network of professionals and organizations with the common goal of supporting community efforts through information, knowledge, and resource exchange to build projects, programs and strategies that respond to the most pressing issues facing our communities, economies, and environments in Southeast Alaska. Coordinated by SAWC in partnership with the Tongass People and Place Program, this collaborative effort is called the Sustainable Southeast Network.
This first Annual Meeting of the Sustainable Southeast Network brought together community-based professionals from Haines, Skagway, Juneau, Sitka, Kake, Hydaburg, and other Prince of Wales Island communities. All working through various community organizations, network participants shared the stories of their work in the past year, recognized their common challenges and opportunities, and realized their potential to achieve a greater collective impact with their work on a regional scale by utilizing the support and resources available through their network.
Network participants identified goals and developed action plans to pursue in the next year. Participants outlined capacity building tools and initiatives to support their collective work in the next year and identified common themes and projects to work on collaboratively on a regional scale.
The end of the meeting saw a connected team of individuals who recognize the pool of knowledge, resources, and support that exist through this peer learning network, and who share in the vision of working together toward becoming a more unified and powerful voice for Southeast Alaska communities that promotes the long-term sustainability of our rural communities and wise management of the region’s watersheds.
SAWC looks forward to working with this motivated and talented group of hard working individuals in the coming year to build the capacity of Southeast Alaska communities to carry out informed resource management and sustainable community development.
[button url=”http://alaskawatershedcoalition.org/CommunityProjects/” color=”aqua” width=”threequarter” ]Learn more about the community projects and programs being carried out by members of the Sustainable Southeast Network![/button]
SAWC would like to thank all of the partners and Network participants that shared their time and knowledge to make this Annual Meeting a success!
[two_columns ]
Alaska Conservation Foundation
The Nature Conservancy
Sitka Conservation Society
Prince of Wales Watershed Association
Taiya Inlet Watershed Council
Rep. Jonathan Kreiss Tompkins
[/two_columns] [two_columns_last ]
Takshanuk Watershed Council
Organized Village of Kake
Barbara Sheinberg
Hydaburg Cooperative Association
Dan Lesh
US Fish and Wildlife Service
[/two_columns_last]