FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE –

January 26, 2006

 Glynn Environmental Coalition
 P. O. Box 2443
 Brunswick, Georgia  31521-2443
 Tel. (912) 466-0934 

LOIS GIBBS HEADLINING ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE

Long-time environmental activist Lois Gibbs, who became famous in the late 1970's for her fight to rescue her Love Canal, NY, neighborhood from toxic contamination, is bringing the organizational expertise of her 24-year-old Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), to southeast Georgia for an Environmental Leadership Conference at the Coastal Georgia Community College Conference Center on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2006.  The event is being co-sponsored by the College and the Glynn Environmental Coalition (GEC).

Ms. Gibbs and CHEJ staff will be providing training in key strategies, including organization and group structure, how to set up your organization to involve more people, to get people to take on responsibilities, to avoid burn-out, and have a democratically run organization in which everyone will have a say without hindering the advancement of the organization.  They will also covers how to keep people active, how to organize your community, get more people involved, map out recruitment plans, and generally help to identify who should be involved, why they should be involved, and how to keep them involved.

Once people are involved in a community struggle they realize that the victories will not come quickly and that they need to organize for the long haul.  CHEJ staff will explain how to set up the organization for a long fight, keep people involved, and continue to recruit new people to sustain organizational growth.  This workshop also covers strategies to move your issues forward by figuring out who can give you what you want and how to make them give it to you, as well as how to put together long and short-term plans and strategies to be more proactive and not always reactive.

The Coastal Georgia Community College Conference Center is located at the corner of

Altama Ave. and 4th Street in Brunswick.  The full conference schedule is as follows:

12:00 to 1:00 – Registration

1:00 to 2:30 – Organization and Group Structure

2:30 to 2:45 – Break

2:45 to 4:30 - Organizing for the Long Haul

4:30 to 6:00 – Dinner Break

6:00 to 7:30 – Lois Gibbs speaks about her experiences in Love Canal, New York. 

The evening event is free to the general public.  The registration fee for the daytime workshops is $15.  To register, contact the Glynn Environmental Coalition, P.O. Box 2443, Brunswick, GA 31521-2443; 912-466-0934; e-mail info@glynnenvironmental.org.  Or register online at www.glynnenvironmental.org/OD2-06reg.htm

Immediately preceding the conference, as part of an awards ceremony in the auditorium of the Continuing Education Center, Ms. Gibbs will present, on behalf of the Glynn Environmental Coalition, its first annual Dr. William T. Lipscomb Science Fair Project Award to the student whose science project best epitomizes concern and hope for a clean environment and healthy economy for coastal Georgia.  Dr. Lipscomb was a professor of biology at the Coastal GA Community College for 18 years and was Secretary of the GEC when he died in February of 2005.

Lois Gibbs was raising her family in Love Canal, near Niagara Falls in upstate New York, when, in 1978, she discovered that her home and those of her neighbors were sitting next to 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals.

That shocking discovery spurred Gibbs to lead her neighbors in a three-year struggle to protect their families from the hazardous waste buried in their backyards.   In that fight, Gibbs discovered that no local, state or national organization existed to provide communities with strategic advice, guidance, training and technical assistance.