2021 Annual Fund Campaign

Dear NMEA Members and Friends:

As another year comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on the past year in NMEA and beyond. This year has been full of challenges and success for everyone in the education community.

During the global pandemic, many of our members were furloughed, experienced reduced salaries, or moved to remote work. In response, NMEA offered a $20 discount on membership for anyone who renews or becomes a member by April 22, 2022.

In June, the NMEA board voted to move the NMEA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) to a permanent standing committee. The DEI committee had been an ad hoc committee formed as a result of conversations among attendees at the NMEA Annual Conference in 2019 in Durham, New Hampshire.

Also in June, the United Nations kicked off the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. In response, NMEA founded a workgroup specifically to look at how NMEA interacts with the Ocean Decade and how NMEA can use this opportunity to spread Ocean Literacy. NMEA is an Ocean Decade U.S. Nexus organization, and many of our members and committees are actively engaging in various aspects of the Ocean Decade.

In July, NMEA held its first virtual national conference. This conference was a huge success and we will be using what we learned from this conference to host our first hybrid conference this summer. The conference will be held at Hofstra University, as well as online, this summer on July 9-13, 2022.

All of this work is due to the dedication of the NMEA board, the hard work of our committees, and the support of our members. However, there is still more work to be done and we need your support. So, in this season of giving, we ask you to support our efforts through a donation of any amount to help NMEA meet our goals. Visit https://www.marine-ed.org/donate to make your tax-deductible donation to our Annual Appeal.

Your donation will help NMEA expand our Ocean Literacy campaign and our involvement in the UN Ocean Decade. It will also help us bring new people into NMEA through our hybrid national conference. Your support will help us to offer scholarships to those attending in-person and those joining us from around the world.

We can all make a difference in expanding marine education and “making known the world of water both fresh and salt.”

Thank you,

David Christopher

NMEA President