Press Release provided by Robert Barossi
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MYSTIC RIVER WATERSHED ASSOCIATION VOLUNTEERS FEATURED IN NEW EBOOK, BEING WHERE YOU ARE: HOW ENVIRONMENTAL VOLUNTEERS IMPACT THEIR COMMUNITY AND THE PLANET EVERY DAY
By Robert Barossi
ARLINGTON, MA - Their efforts often overlooked, volunteers play a vital role in the environmental solutions of our time. Freely giving of their time and devotion, environmental volunteers are ordinary citizens who consistently give back to their local communities, both man-made and natural. These are the stories of those volunteers and their extraordinary work.
Being Where You Are: How Environmental Volunteers Impact Their Community and the Planet Every Day features the stories of an eclectic group of environmentally involved citizens. They include a frog song monitor who used to be terrified of frogs, a man whose personal mission and life’s work is to clean his town’s beaches, and a mother-daughter team of suburban beetle ranchers, among others. Their efforts run the gamut from monitoring osprey nests and banding songbirds to pulling trash out of rivers and educating children at nature centers. While the locales range from small coastal towns and mountain villages to major cities, all of the volunteers have a deep connection to the special places where they live. They also have a lot to say and teach about the environmental problems we all face and how every person, regardless of location or stage of life, can get involved and do their part.
Told by the volunteers, in their own words, these are stories of giving back to the community and the planet. Stories of finding special connections to special places. Stories of the many ways that anyone who is willing and able can have a powerful and lasting impact on those places. This includes stories from Michael Ripple and Karen Buck, both active volunteers for the Mystic River Watershed Association who give of themselves, their time and effort, in many ways. These dedicated and passionate citizens demonstrate how volunteers can and do get involved in important environmental work along the Mystic River and in similar watersheds everywhere.
Being Where You Are is currently available as an eBook, with a print version planned for the near future. It can be downloaded for $1.99 at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, the Apple iTunes store, KoboBooks.com and other online eBook retailers.
About the Author: For more than three years, Robert Barossi has been immersed in the world and work of environmental volunteers. In April of 2011, he began working with the Trustees of Reservations, the largest land conservation organization in Massachusetts, on a public relations project aimed at the group’s volunteers. Robert spent that spring and summer attending volunteer events, meeting with volunteers, speaking with them and interviewing them, at Trustees properties across the state. Over the summer and fall of 2011, he worked with the Trustees’ Public Relations Manager, writing press releases detailing the stories of the interviewed volunteers. The following spring and summer, Robert began the process of contacting and interviewing volunteers for the work that culminated in Being Where You Are. Over the course of the project, approximately eighty environmental organizations were contacted. Many volunteer program directors and managers responded, enthusiastically interested in taking part and willing to facilitate contact with the organization’s volunteers. He then contacted volunteers at all of the responding organizations, eventually interviewing roughly sixty of them, from Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, varying in age from twenty-three to eighty years old. Those interviews now make up the chapters of Being Where You Are. Robert is a recent graduate of Green Mountain College, where he received his Masters of Science in Environmental Studies, with a concentration in writing and communications. Recently, his environmental writing has appeared on the blog for The Trustees of Reservations, as well as a new environmental blog which he helped to launch, The Ecotone Exchange (theecotoneexchange.com). He has continued to tell the stories of environmental volunteers at his own blog, Being Where You Are (beingwhereyouare.com) and can be followed on Twitter @RobBarossi.
