Why I volunteer with Grow the Flow
I love birds, so when I moved to Salt Lake City fifteen years ago, I was thrilled to visit the Great Salt Lake, where I got to see my first Rock Wrens, first Yellow-headed Blackbirds, first Long-billed Curlews (a pair with 14 baby chicks), and thousands of American Avocets feasting on brine shrimp in the shallows along the Antelope Island Causeway.
Imagine my horror when I heard Dr. Ben Abbott’s warning in 2022 that the Great Salt Lake as we know it could disappear in five years, killing its wildlife and turning our valley into a toxic dust bowl. Early last year, heart-broken, I sold my house, moved into a rental, searched for and bought a condominium in a purple state with clean air, plenty of water, and my son nearby. By the end of summer, I came to my senses. What I had here—my friends, my daughter, my church, and even the Great Salt Lake—were too precious to walk away from. I sold the condo, and decided to stay here and work to save the lake.
I started by writing my own Utah Representative, and she wrote back that she wants to save the lake, because she has children, and she wants them to be able to grow up healthy and live out their lives here. Then I reached out to my church, First Unitarian, and our environmental ministry supported me in holding letter-writing workshops every fourth Tuesday to mobilize members to write their Utah legislators on behalf of the Lake. Our minister Reverend J. preached about it, so our workshops are growing in numbers.
By using my experience in contacting legislators and by consulting the ACLU website, I designed a template to lead people through a proven step-by-step process to craft an effective letter to their lawmakers.
As I looked for a ways to enlarge my volunteer efforts to save the Great Salt Lake, I signed up for the Grow the Flow newsletter. That led me to my first Salt Lake Chapter meeting, where I was impressed with how Rachel Lake and Jake Dreyfus engaged us volunteers, gave us great information, answered our questions, and listened to our ideas. While tabling with Grow the Flow at the Salt Lake County Watershed Symposium, I loved the way the well-designed graphics (including stickers!), great information, and mission to recruit 100,000 citizens to advocate for the lake drew people in and made it easy to encourage them to join the effort.
It was exciting to tell people that a scientist, Ben Abbott, who not only understood the crisis facing the Great Salt Lake and sounded the alarm to the public did not stop there, but founded a non-profit organization to work to save the lake, and, yes, many wanted to join.
My second chapter meeting was even more interactive than the first. I learned more about Grow the Flow’s research and policy acceleration and signed up for a tabling event at the Walmart at 46th South. Then I got to share with the the group about our church’s letter-writing workshops, and Rachel invited me to distribute my step-by-step templates. That showed me that Grow the Flow’s collaborative way of working is one of their greatest strengths.
If you want to magnify your volunteer talents and enthusiasm for working for the Lake, Grow the Flow is the best place I know of.