CRGC team members, community partners, and advisors tour local businesses in Bayou La Batre, AL.

CRGC team members, community partners, and advisors tour local businesses in Bayou La Batre, AL.

With team members spread across not only the Gulf States region, but also the entire U.S., CRGC holds an “all-hands” meeting each year to bring together its principal investigators, research staff, and students. For its 2016 meeting, the Consortium recently met in Mobile, Alabama. The meeting was kicked off with a Message Box training, which was led by COMPASS, to provide the team with tools and techniques for messaging CRGC’s work to different types of audiences and synthesizing results into effective products. CRGC’s Technical Advisory Committee— a group of experts who provide scientific and technical guidance to the Consortium on measures related to developing community resilience in the Gulf Coast—was also invited to attend the meeting to hear updates and make recommendations about CRGC’s existing and planned activities. In addition, members of CRGC’s Alabama Stakeholder Advisory Committee attended the meeting to learn more about the Consortium’s latest research findings, particularly as they relate to the community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama—one of the three communities CRGC is targeting though its community action planning work. The Stakeholder Advisory Committee is comprised of local stakeholders who provide valuable insight into the health, social, economic, legal, and cultural landscapes of the communities in which CRGC is working in, both in Alabama and in Louisiana. On the second day of the meeting, CRGC team members and Technical Advisory Committee members traveled to Bayou La Batre for a field trip, which was led by Stakeholder Advisory Committee members, Annette Johnson, who is the Mayor of Bayou La Batre, and Daniel Le, who is the Branch Manager of Boat People SOS. The group toured Dominick’s Seafood, a local shrimp processor, Olympic Shellfish, a local crabmeat processor, and Horizon Shipbuilding, a local shipyard.