Building on Better Beaches

At Save the Harbor/Save the Bay we love this time of year because people up and down the coast are excited to clean up their beaches and show them off to new visitors – and we get to help.

Thanks to generous contributions from The Boston Foundation, National Grid and Comcast, we anticipate that we will have dozens of fun and free events in every beach community from Nahant to Nantasket, so wherever you call home, there should be an event on a nearby beach.

Our president Patty Foley reflected last spring that “It’s remarkable what people who love their beach and their community can accomplish with just a little bit of help.”

After spending some time working with people who love their beaches, I couldn’t agree more. Most everyone that we work with fell in love with “the beach” (whichever it may have been) early and has given back often.

Especially now that we have heard the ideas for the summer from our friends groups on our Metropolitan Beaches from Nahant to Nantasket, these words resonate once again.

The Better Beaches project – bringing people back to our beaches – is never-ending and sometimes challenging but it can also be a great deal of fun. This year, with a little bit of encouragement, we are hearing from people from all of our beach communities about how they plan to take their beach stewardship to the next level through media partnerships, advertising, outreach, fundraising, merchandising, and membership initiatives.

Together, in 2010, these friends will create and sell thousands of T-shirts and other items, develop an online store, produce a TV ad, and work hard to bake several other fresh ideas into working models for financial sustainability.

Strengthened by these strategies, we are confident our friends groups will put together an impressive slate of events from Constitution Beach’s kickoff Beach Party to Nantasket Beach’s Endless Summer that will give people throughout the region plenty of reasons to stretch their summer season and find new things to love about our beaches.

Aside from fulfilling our goal of bringing more people out to the beaches, this year’s series of events will generate a lot of great images and press, stories – and most importantly – memories.

We really hope you are able to make it out to some of this year’s events and buy some kites, totes and T’s. We will use the Better Beaches Blog and our Boston Harbor Facebook Page to keep you posted about beach happenings and events and the great groups that host them.