Alabama Panhellenic Association Greek Week Grant

Alabama Panhellenic Association Donates Greek Week Grant to Riverkeeper.

For Immediate Release
April 10, 2013

Contact:
Charles Scribner, Executive Director, Black Warrior Riverkeeper: (205) 458-0095,
[email protected]

Tuscaloosa, Ala. – The Alabama Panhellenic Association has invited Black Warrior Riverkeeper to receive a generous Greek Week grant at the Greek Week Leadership and Service Banquet in the Ferguson Center Ballroom at The University of Alabama (UA) on April 16 at 6 p.m. The UA Panhellenic Association’s donation will support the nonprofit clean water advocacy organization’s Riverkeeper Patrol Program. Nelson Brooke, Riverkeeper, will utilize the funding toward laboratory analysis of water samples collected on his pollution investigations throughout Alabama’s 17-county Black Warrior River watershed, which supplies approximately half of Birmingham’s and all of Tuscaloosa’s drinking water.

“We have been so proud to earn Alabama Panhellenic Association funding over the past four years,” said Charles Scribner, executive director of Black Warrior Riverkeeper. “It is particularly gratifying to receive grants from the Greek system, many of whom are overwhelmingly active in our UA volunteer projects.”

Scribner reports that 230 volunteers generously donated 5,760 community service hours through Black Warrior Riverkeeper projects in 2012. The vast majority of those volunteers were UA students, many of which were members of sororities or fraternities who routinely removed litter from the banks of the Black Warrior River near campus. According to The Independent Sector, the most recent estimated national dollar value of volunteer time is $21.79 per hour. Multiplied by $21.79, Black Warrior Riverkeeper volunteers’ 5,760 service hours in 2012 represented a value of $125,510 toward their surrounding communities. Scribner attributes much of UA’s strong community service impact to the UA Community Service Center’s excellent coordination with community partners. The Greek system’s emphasis on community service enhances that participation rate.

In other UA-related activity, Black Warrior Riverkeeper leads a large, diverse, and growing coalition that has publicly encouraged UA System Trustees to stop the Shepherd Bend Mine from threatening the Black Warrior River, the tap water supply for 200,000 Birmingham-area citizens, and the UA System’s good reputation. UA is the main owner of land and minerals coveted by UA Trustee Emeritus Gary Neill Drummond for a proposed strip mine directly across the river from the Birmingham Water Works’ intake on the Black Warrior River’s Mulberry Fork. In 2012, the UA SGA passed a Resolution imploring UA System Trustees to stop the mine.

In addition to collaborations with Alabama Panhellenic Association, UA Community Service Center and UA SGA, Black Warrior Riverkeeper has steadily forged positive partnerships with UA Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, UA Department of Advertising and Public Relations, UA ECo, UA Environmental Law Society, UA Museums, UA NAACP and numerous UA professors, students, employees and alumni.

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Black Warrior Riverkeeper is a citizen-based nonprofit clean water advocacy organization whose mission is to protect and restore the Black Warrior River and its tributaries. A member of Waterkeeper Alliance, Black Warrior Riverkeeper was the Alabama Environmental Council’s 2007 Conservation Organization of the Year and the American Canoe Association’s 2008 Green Paddle Award winner. Nelson Brooke, Riverkeeper, won the Alabama Rivers Alliance’s 2010 River Hero Award. Contact: Charles Scribner, Executive Director, at [email protected] or 205-458-0095.