Year in Review & Holiday Greetings from Susan Adams, CCL Coordinator, Third Coast Region

On December 23, 2023 By CCLATXIn CCLATX

Holiday greetings to our generous Third Coast climate donors!

I wanted to express my heartfelt gratitude for your generosity to Citizens’ Climate Education Third Coast in 2023. Thanks to you and the other amazing supporters from around the region, we were able to have hit impactful milestones like the following:

Hosted our first ever Texas State Lobby Day in Austin in March, where 81 volunteers from across Texas met with 66 State House and Senate offices to talk about transmission bills.
Held our 9th Annual Regional Conference in New Orleans, making it our most inclusive ever by offering 50 tree ticket waivers, 42 free/discounted student tickets, and 21 travel grants (see the highlight video here).
Funded $6,000 in travel scholarships to 13 volunteers so that they could attend our CCL National Conference and Lobby Day in Washington, D.C. in June.
Funded several rural outreach events, including the 3-day Feather Fest in Galveston, Texas in April, sending volunteers from Lubbock to Odessa, Texas to participate in a public EPA air pollution hearing, hosting a chapter relaunch in College Station, Texas, and hosting a holiday gathering in Southaven, Missippi.
Supported fund raising efforts like the Austin chapter’s Tour Divide fundraising appeal.
Provided over $4,000 in chapter support, including tabling materials, food, and event fees for student chapters at Concordia University and Texas A&M University, and smaller chapters throughout Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Please read more about the amazing successes of our Texas State Lobby Day and 9th Annual Regional Conference in New Orleans in these reports:

Looking to 2024, we plan to use our donor funds to support initiatives like the following:

Support 2024 Regional Chapter Expansion, targeting outreach events to launch or revive 15 targeted chapters in our newly enlarged Third Coast Plus region, which now includes Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. Tentative targets include Corpus Christi, El Paso, Galveston, Baton Rouge and Shreveport.
Fund travel scholarships from across our region for the CCL National Conference in Washington, D.C., June 8 – 12.
Support our 10th annual Regional Conference being tentatively scheduled for October 5 at Texas A&M University Galveston. Our ability to offer free tickets and travel grants is crucial to making these events inclusive.
Support Get Out the Vote efforts throughout the region, including candidate climate policy forums, postcards campaigns, and more.

Want to pitch in for 2024? You can donate through our webpage here at any time!

Finally, I’d like to share a brief video our program team created last week in honor of all that our CCL volunteers accomplished, through your support, in 2023! I can’t wait to see what we accomplish in 2024.