I am beyond honored that you have chosen me to serve the North Carolina Federation as part of the 2022-2024 administration. I am excited to work with all of you to make a collective impact across the state.
My theme for this administration is North Carolina Climate Advocacy, Resiliency, Education, and Sustainability (NC CARES). As I look at our country and state, I can’t help but take notice of the extreme weather we are all beginning to face. It feels like everyday on the news there is a new, more severe storm or fire, rising sea levels or an odd fluctuation in temperature.
Personally, being from a city like New Orleans, I have always expected more severe storms as Louisiana has seen major erosion issues over the years. Living in North Carolina, I have realized throughout our state we see impacts of this climate change from “the mountains to the sea”. According to the EPA in 2019, “most of the state has warmed one-half to one degree F in the last century, and the sea is rising about one inch every decade.” Rising sea levels will cause bigger storm surges, and warming temperatures will cause more intense storms.
I started asking myself what I could do to help the situation. My husband and I began buying more local food and produce, learning how to recycle properly and eliminating single use plastics in our environment. The more I educated myself I came to admire younger people, like Greta Thunberg, who were advocating to make their lives and the lives of their children better through changes to legislation and regulations.
Through my special project, I wanted to educate those in North Carolina on how they can, in their individual homes and communities, help lessen the impacts of climate change and advocate for broader changes throughout the state and country.
I will be partnering with two organizations:
- Envision Charlotte – helping Charlotte achieve its goal to become a circular economy through zero waste objectives and reuse of all products.
- North Carolina Conservation Network – advocating for policies to help combat climate change throughout the state and making positive changes to the environment through their large network of affiliate organizations.
I hope you will join me in fostering a safe and bright future in North Carolina by supporting these environmental efforts.
In pursuit of these goals and with an eye to the future of the organization, I would also like to focus my administration on membership, engagement, leadership and diversity among the North Carolina Juniors. I would love to have our Juniors excited and ready to take on leadership opportunities in our state and to have their diverse thoughts and opinions known. As such, I have plans to provide some additional leadership, discussion and listening sessions for our Junior members to achieve those goals.
I am also committed to getting the GFWC-NC Junior message to the public through our new Instagram page. Whether Junior, General or Juniorette please take a moment to follow our new page – gfwcncjuniors – and begin interacting.
I believe through these efforts we will achieve positive change in our communities and our state Federation!