In the News

LTEEC Steering Committee Charts Ambitious Course
date posted: February 22 2002

2002 and 2003 Work Plan

At our January 2002 meeting of the LTEEC Steering Committee, 24 individuals gathered to chart our course for 2002 and 2003. We first asked ourselves what benefits and positive results we want to produce in the next couple of years. Mindful of our long-term goal of ensuring that all citizens know how to protect our environment, we prioritized a list of 31 activities to pursue in our collective working plans this year and next. At our annual meeting on March 20, we will encourage our subgroups to create detailed action plans for implementing these priority educational activities. Though current plans are still preliminary, please refer to page 3 for excerpts from the 2002 and 2003 LTEEC work plan.

Interestingly, the highest priority of the Steering Committee was to create a funding plan to support our LTEEC Environmental Education Coordinator position for the long term, and to raise (or support partner agency efforts to raise) additional funds for the subgroups' educational events. The number two priority was to produce a media campaign to include weekly television spots on how to protect the Tahoe environment. Our LTEEC Coordinator, Heather Segale, has some terrific leads on this idea, but here again we need to obtain funding to make it happen.

Other high priorities included increasing the circulation of the quarterly newsletter and reminding all agencies to inform the LTEEC Coordinator as soon as they begin planning environmental education events. The Steering Committee agrees that the more visible and complete we can make the LTEEC events calendar, the more valuable it will be in reaching all citizens and increasing participation in public events. Both the web site (www.lteec.org) and the LTEEC newsletter will promote the events calendar. In addition, Heather is eager to receive articles from LTEEC members and web site content from each subgroup leader.
Another idea that surfaced as a priority was to form a new subgroup specifically to educate the general public about the Lake Tahoe Environmental Improvement Program (EIP).

How LTEEC is Organized

The Lake Tahoe Environmental Education Coalition functions through a decentralized structure of eight subgroups (see page 9) that plan events for specific purposes and audiences. These semiautonomous subgroups need leaders who can help folks from various schools and agencies work together to present collaborative environmental education events. The leaders of the subgroups are all members of the LTEEC Steering Committee. By meeting on an as-needed basis (usually quarterly) the Steering Committee seeks to create comprehensive, coordinated methods of educating residents and visitors about how to protect the Lake Tahoe environment.

Why Collaborate?

Getting our 24 member organizations working together is not easy. We call our collaboration a “bold experiment” because most of us are more used to competing with other organizations than cooperating with them. It’s often easier to plan public events “in-house,” and many organizations produce excellent educational events each year.

What many Steering Committee members have realized, however, is that without a comprehensive plan and strong interagency communication, efforts often fall short. Lack of coordination can lead to pitfalls such as concurrently scheduled events, insufficient publicity, and low attendance. Citizens in the past have never had a single source for learning about all environmental education opportunities at Tahoe.

LTEEC’s primary objective is to help groups with similar education priorities cooperate rather than planning public events in a vacuum. In some cases, it will make sense for organizations to combine energy to produce one major event rather than separately producing smaller ones.

Thanks

We want to thank LTEEC’s subgroup leaders and other Steering Committee members for making LTEEC a priority this year. We realize that many of you are contributing energy to the coalition without getting paid for your time as part of your job. If we can continue our bold experiment of joining forces and supporting each other in our environmental education efforts, we think each member organization will benefit. Together, we can help protect Tahoe’s clear, blue magnificence for future generations.