Alliance for a Living Ocean recently received a $1,500 grant from Restore Our Shore, a volunteer-led organization dedicated to helping charitable groups “restore, rebuild and recover” from Superstorm Sandy, to aid the nonprofit organization’s post-Sandy cleanup events on Long Beach Island and in surrounding communities. The environmental cleanings have been ongoing since the end of November. The grant will go toward funding the events’ necessary supplies such as bags, gloves and other equipment.
Chris Huch, ALO’s executive director, said the local organization is “incredibly thankful for Restore Our Shore providing us with this wonderful grant opportunity,” which will help the group continue its mission during the area’s recovery process.
Charitable organizations seeking grants to help facilitate their missions during the recovery process are encouraged to apply for funds via restoreourshore.com. Applications are reviewed every other week, and grants are awarded on a bi-monthly basis. Many community-wide events have helped raise funds for the group’s efforts.
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| Photo by Jack Reynolds ALO members and volunteers have been meeting at Bayview Park in Brant Beach to continue their environmental cleanups. |
“Any donations or grants that come our way are incredibly beneficial to making sure that we can continue our work,” he noted.
ALO’s environmental cleanups are currently being held every other Saturday. They will continue well into the spring season and possibly during the summer months, as the organization expects debris from tide changes, currents, ice floes and small-scale storms to continue appearing on the Island and nearby marshlands.
“When you think about the way things really need to look and what level of trash is acceptable on our beaches and in our environment, we think that no level of trash is really acceptable, and all of it should be cleaned up. So we’ll be out there making sure that takes place,” said Huch.
This past weekend, ALO’s volunteers found an “impressive” amount of debris in some of the areas that had not yet been cleaned, such as at the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences and its surrounding marshes in Loveladies, as well at the Newell Avenue marsh, located on the south side of Beach Haven West. Even with a substantial number of volunteers, the group was unable to finish cleaning the areas, as there is “so much work that needs to be done still,” said Huch.
As the spring season crops up, Melissa Klepacki, founder of Restore Our Shore, said the newly conceived organization would begin to focus on giving its donor-received funds to nonprofits dedicated to the area’s current environmental concerns. Cleaning up beaches, marshlands and other areas where animal species usually return to nest is one major priority.
“The ecological impact of having animals not returning over time is pretty severe. I think people forget about those kinds of impacts that the hurricane has,” Klepacki noted.
Restore Our Shore is comprised of 11 team members, including Bill Schofield, former president and CEO of the United Way in Bucks County, Pa., where he helped provide relief to the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. The organization’s members are committed to the area’s recovery process and are using their expertise in social media, public relations, community outreach, art and technology, as well as accounting and charitable giving, to aid coastal communities with their rebuilding efforts. Alongside the Joshua Harr Shane Foundation, the Princeton-based organization has helped raise more than $45,000. The group hopes to raise $150,000 by Memorial Day.
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| Photo via Restore Our Shore The Princeton-based start up, generated out of a statewide need following Superstorm Sandy, hopes to raise $150,000 by Memorial Day. |
“We’re not interested in giving someone $5,000 to put into their general fund. We’re really looking for specific ways that we can help that gives our donors something to be proud of, because most of our donors are at the $5, $10, $20, $25 level. They really want to know where their money is going,” Klepacki mentioned. “We’re able to accurately report exactly what it’s being used for, and (we’re) hoping to go back to these same donors and say, ‘Look at these great things we did with your $10. Would you consider giving another $10?’”
Restore the Shore is awarding grants between $1,000 and $5,000. The organization’s largest donation thus far was $4,300, which was given to the Antrim Elementary School in Point Pleasant Beach, to help with its playground floor restoration project. Klepacki said grants are being awarded judiciously, based on the amount of money they receive from donors, as well as the recipients’ specific needs. Donations have been given to many local charities in need, including schools, food pantries, shelters, first aid squads and churches.
Restore Our Shore’s donation to ALO was the first in Southern Ocean County, though Klepacki said she expects to receive more applications from charitable organizations in the southern part of the county.
Huch anticipates the grant will help move ALO’s cleanups along much more quickly, thus making the organization’s recovery at its Ship Bottom location, which suffered from 3½ feet of floodwater and severe mold damage, more timely.
Although the state has plans to remove larger debris such as remote pieces of lumber and decking that require more manpower to move, as well as some sand dredging in the bay waters that is needed to ensure the areas are deep enough for swimming and seining, ALO anticipates it will not be able to hold some of its earliest programs in the summer at Bayview Park in Brant Beach and the bay beach in Ship Bottom, which will affect the impact of donations the group relies on.
“It’s going to be up to a lot of community members to really step up and really make an impact in a lot of these areas if we want to be ready by the summer,” said Huch.
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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