Population Strategy Meeting 2009
In October 2009, the 3rd annual Population Strategy Working Group meeting assembled at the Barbara Jordan Conference Center, located in downtown Washington, DC, at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The group of 75 sustainability and population activists included envoys and emissaries from Great Britain, Canada and Australia and a healthy mix of representatives from philanthropic foundations and conservation NGOs.
The primary purpose Population Media Center has in organizing the Population Strategy Meetings is to bring together the best and the brightest minds from the sustainable population advocacy world. Our goal is to help meeting participants formulate and choose strategies for successfully raising the profile of the population issue. As participants share information about their own work, opportunities for collaboration naturally appear.
The day’s agenda began with presentations from two United States population and sustainability leaders – Jack Marshall, President of Advocates for Sustainable Albemarle Population and Joyce Tarnow, executive director of Floridians for Sustainable Population. These two important innovators are addressing population and sustainability issues at smaller, and arguably more manageable scales than is often the case. Jack Marshall and ASAP are working hard in Albemarle County, Virginia. Joyce Tarnow and FSP are active at the state level in Florida.
In addition to ASAP and FSP, the meeting also enjoyed updates from Lester Brown of World Watch, Ed Barry of Population Institute, Diana Hull of Californians for Population Stabilization, Don Weeden of the Weeden Foundation, PMC’s own Bill Ryerson and Jenny Goldie of Sustainable Population Australia
PMC staff also reported out on on-going projects that originally sprung from the first Population Strategy Meeting in 2006. PMC’s radio talk show program, for instance, originated in the efforts of a committee that was formed after the first meeting. Their task was to study and create a comprehensive fact sheet of population related talking points for use in public relations initiatives. Thanks largely to the work of this committee, PMC has arranged for 176 radio interviews totaling over 800 hours of air-time. You can listen to a sampling of these programs here. PMC looks forward to the next Population Strategy Meeting, scheduled for 2010. If you have suggestions for agenda items or would like to be considered for attendance, please contact Joe Bish at joebish@populationmedia.org.
