August 3, 2006 | Read Time: 1 minute
THE FACE OF PHILANTHROPY
Photograph by Mathieu Meur
Saving the environment doesn’t have to cost millions of dollars. Seacology, a 10-year-old nonprofit group in Berkeley, Calif., that works to preserve island ecosystems, spends just $23,000 on each project it runs on 84 islands in 40 countries throughout the world.
People who live on the world’s tropical islands are often torn between a desire to preserve their land and their own economic needs, says Duane Silverstein, Seacology’s executive director.
With an average per-capita annual income of less than $400 a year, most island dwellers can’t afford to turn down a lucrative offer to buy a local forest to make way for a resort, he notes. “If villagers are deciding not to put up a beautiful hotel on their island, they know they are sentencing their children and grandchildren to poverty in perpetuity,” he says.
The charity offers island residents an alternative to selling out: It agrees to establish a land reserve and pay for all the supplies and skilled labor needed to build community centers, schools, water-delivery systems, and other facilities and systems the islanders need to flourish.
Last year, Seacology received $1.3-million from individuals, corporations, and foundations. Some of that money came from the charity’s trustees, who also donated their time to the organization.
Here, board members Jon Ives, co-founder of Software.com, in Santa Barbara, Calif., and Shari Sant Plummer, secretary of the Summit Charitable Foundation, in Washington, help to install biodegradable reefs in waters near Palawan Island in the Philippines, so that coral will have a place to grow and fish will return.
