Expedition Blue Planet Does Charleston
Last week, Alexandra Cousteau and Expedition Blue Planet came through Charleston as part of their 14,500 mile journey across North America. Cousteau and her team have teamed up with National Geographic to document the many water issues impacting our world’s waters.
On Wednesday, Charleston Waterkeeper organized, in partnership with the College of Charleston’s Student Government Association, a “Water Village” – a community event on George Street, providing individuals with an opportunity to meet and great Cousteau, while learning about issues impacting Charleston’s waterways and our waterways worldwide.
The day was a huge success; hundreds of individuals – students, faculty, staff, members from the community – came out for the day. If you missed the event, here’s an hour of the Water Village condensed into 3 minutes…
The Blue Legacy team put together a great blog post, summarizing the day’s success. To check it out, click here.
Also, here’s an interview done by ABC News 4…
A big thanks to all those involved, and to all of you who came out to visit!
Want to know more about Blue Legacy? Here’s an excerpt from their site:
Blue Legacy is an initiative started in 2008 by Alexandra Cousteau to engage individuals around the world through telling the story of our water planet. Blue Legacy works to: to help shape society’s dialogue to include water as one of the defining issues of our century; to inspire people to take action on critical water issues in meaningful ways.
People throughout the world are increasingly aware that our environment is changing: natural resources are disappearing, pollution is widespread, the climate is becoming more volatile, diseases spread more rapidly, and ways of life are vanishing. Water is at the heart of these issues and is the primary vehicle through which climate change will be felt.
Blue Legacy is a catalyst for action and change—promoting ideas for innovative solutions that individuals and communities around the globe can implement to address the issues facing our water planet. We believe that for too long, activists have asked people to protect environmental treasures that most individuals have never experienced. Our projects leverage film, educational tools and traditional media along with emerging technologies and social networks to help “mainstream” audiences around the world experience the people, places and systems affected by critical water issues. We believe that every citizen of the world can be an environmentalist and are committed to shaping daily conversation to include critical water issues.
Science, Expertise, and Policy Behind Every Project
Though many of the stories we share with our rapidly growing audience are simple and poignant, Blue Legacy is dedicated to going beyond the sensationalism that often marks moments of environmental crisis. Beginning with an inaugural session in October 2009, the Blue Action Dialogues, in partnership with the Aspen Institute, will meet each year to gather a diverse team of some of the world’s leading water scientists, policy experts and innovators to develop an annual platform and target critical issues for Blue Legacy projects.
Transparency, Efficiency and Measurable Impact
In order to deliver maximum efficiency for every dollar and hour invested by those who partner with us to produce projects, Blue Legacy currently operates as a project of The Ocean Foundation. This Washington, DC-based community foundation delivers the operational and administrative infrastructure that has helped us to maintain a “10-percent cap” on administrative and overhead costs through our start-up and initial growth phases and provides the highest level of accountability and reporting. In addition to a commitment to transparency and efficiency, Blue Legacy is guided by a prestigious Advisory Board that includes a former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seasoned leaders from the business, academic, global policy and non-profit communities, and pioneers in environmentalism.
