The first ever "Sierra Club & Beer" kicked off Wednesday night, September 10, 2003 in Atlanta with a great success. The evening ran from 6:30-8:30 and attracted about 150 people during the evening. The beer was donated by Sweetwater, a local brewery and the space donated by Teaspace, a local restaurant. Neill Herring, Georgia Chapter lobbyist was the speaker. A quiz game and raffle provided the opportunity for people to mingle and meet one another.
The vision of "Sierra Club & Beer" was to provide a place for young Metro Atlantans to meet and get involved with our efforts to protect the environment. We wanted to capture those names and keep those people better informed on events and activities, while doing retail recruitment to those who want to do more political work. We gathered 100 membership survey forms from attendees.
Judging from various anecdotes, our vision came to fruition. We often heard, "I am new to Atlanta and wanted to meet people who are interested in these issues." The owners of Teaspace are psyched, and want to continue to develop a working relationship between Teaspace and the Sierra Club. "Sierra Club & Beer" will ideally be the foundation for other offshoots, like an art installation on the Chattahoochee, movie nights, or other creative ideas that all these young people can bring to the Club. We are creating a community--business cards and e-mails exchanged hands all evening.
The steering committee included young volunteers from the Metro area, including Zasha Basette, Rex Lybrand, David Zuniga, Scott Goldstein, Jessica W., Mike Sutton, Sean Tenney, Lauren Justice, Carly Apple and others. Everyone took a piece of recruitment and outreach, contributing to the success of the event.
Looking ahead, "Sierra Club & Beer" has several options. We will be meeting in a de-brief session soon. We hope to make this a regular event with Teaspace and Sweetwater and will work to do so. Thanks to Bryan for his last minute help and financial resources. Thanks to Georgia Chapter for believing in the next generation of environmental leaders.
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