Courtesy photo Courtesy photo CEO of GLGR Meag Schwartz is pictured.

ALPENA — After eight years serving as the network coordinator for the Northeast Michigan Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative (NMGLSI), Meag Schwartz has decided to leave the organization to eventually become the full-time CEO of the Great Lakes Great Responsibility (GLGR) nonprofit in Northeast Michigan.

Based in Alpena, NMGLSI is a network of education and community partners whose mission it is to promote place-based stewardship education opportunities in Northeast Michigan. As network coordinator, Schwartz helped create and maintain those partnerships across the Northeast Michigan region, supporting education opportunities for students and educators.

Schwartz said that NMGLSI covers eight counties in the Northeast Michigan region.

Schwartz founded GLGR in 2020 with the goal of marine debris prevention. This organization hosts various cleanup efforts in the Northeast Michigan region, while also creating opportunities for environmental stewardship education for youth and community members.

Schwartz said she’s been serving in a volunteer capacity with GLGR for six years and will be transitioning to a part-time CEO role with GLGR with the goal of becoming a full-time CEO once the organization is financially capable to support Schwartz.

“We will be continuing to solicit funding to bring me up to a full-time position,” she said.

Schwartz explained that her goals as CEO will be to expand the work that GLGR is already doing beyond Northeast Michigan.

“We got our start as a cleanup initiative and we are moving into the prevention world,” she said.

Schwartz said that a bigger goal is to support legislation that will aid in their goal of preventing marine debris from entering the Great Lakes ecosystem. She added that GLGR is also looking towards “linking arms with different partners in the region.”

“It’s great to have collaboration,” she said.

Schwartz explained that GLGR is interested in ways that the organization can support the installation of storm litter traps and other marine debris prevention infrastructure. The organization is also looking at other ways it can leverage the stewardship work done in Northeast Michigan and replicate it in other parts of the state.

At present, GLGR continues to support initiatives in the Northeast Michigan community to support environmental stewardship and place-based education opportunities for youth and interested community members.

Part of this work includes infrastructure installation across the region and continued cleanup initiatives. On Friday, GLGR participated in a youth project to install a self-serve cleanup station at the Lakeside Park in Rogers City in partnership with Rogers City Elementary School. Funding for this project was provided by the Community Foundation for Northeast Michigan.

Schwartz added that GLGR has already been approved to install the stations at Starlite Beach and Mich-e-ke-wis Park in Alpena. These installations aid in the organization’s place-based education initiatives as well as its mission to prevent marine debris from entering the Great Lakes ecosystem.

GLGR has a goal of collecting 1 million pieces of trash to support this mission. Schwartz said that the organization is on its way to meeting that goal.

“We’re approaching the 700,000-piece mark in the next week or two based on data projections,” she said.

Those who are interested in reporting their own trash pickup efforts can enter their piece count at greatlakeslove.org. As of Tuesday, participants have logged 694,911 pieces of trash collected from the Northeast Michigan region.

Going forward, Schwartz said that funding continues to be a challenge for the organization due to grant cuts on the federal level. She explained that this has a trickle down effect and makes the nonprofit space more competitive.

“Funding continues to be a challenge just because of the competitive nonprofit landscape partially due to federal grant cuts,” she said.

Despite these challenges, Schwartz said GLGR is still committed to its cleanup initiatives, environmental stewardship efforts, and mission to create more educational opportunities for the community.

Kayla Wikaryasz can be reached at 989-358-5688 or kwikaryasz@TheAlpenaNews.com.