Friends May Newsletter
This month’s newsletter looks back on a very successful Earth Day celebration. Every year Earth Day provides a singular day to share our mission and celebrate as an island community. The theme for last month’s celebration focused on the beautiful oceans that surround our island home and included multiple coastal cleanups, a community tree giveaway, and the 14th Annual Earth Day Fair for St. John schools. It was a joy to see kids posters displayed with pride, engagement and conversation about everything from mangrove restoration to watershed management, and piles of marine debris collected!
It was also a reminder that it takes a community to do the work we do. The businesses and organizations on St. John have battled through extraordinary challenges over the past five years and yet they can always be relied upon to come through with impactful actions that make a difference on our island! For Earth Day activities alone we thank Low Key Watersports, Virgin Islands Expedition Company, St. John Rotary, Dulce Vita Sails, Get Trashed St. John, and the Unitarian Universalist Church for helping with beach cleanups, as well as the twelve groups who hosted Earth Day Fair booths. The upcoming Beach To Beach Power Swim is made possible thanks to another 69 sponsors listed below. Going forward we will regularly feature one of our business partnerships in this newsletter by way of thanks to this community! We start this month with Ocean Surfari.
As our season of seminars and events comes to an end in June, we shift gears to youth programming, scholarships, and the kick off of turtle nesting season. Please take time to read the 2022/23 Sea Turtle Protection Program report that highlights the critical work the team does to protect these endangered creatures.
