| Chair's Comment
Committee on Community Activities (CCA)
2008 promises to be an exciting year for community outreach!
Greetings and Happy New Year from the ACS Committee on Community Activities (CCA)!
My name is Ingrid Montes, and I am the current Chair of the Committee on Community Activities. I want to take this opportunity to welcome and thank those of you who stepped up and volunteered to coordinate community outreach activities within your local section in 2007.
If you were thinking about volunteering within your local section in the upcoming year, I would encourage you to work with one or more of the community outreach programs, such as Chemists Celebrate Earth Day (CCED), National Chemistry Week (NCW), and Salutes to Excellence.
Celebrated annually on April 22, CCED promotes chemistry’s contributions to a sustainable environment. The Office of Community Activities (OCA) in conjunction with the CCED theme team (made of CCA members and other interested ACS members—let us know if you are interested!) is developing an extensive set of resources to support this year’s theme: “Streaming Chemistry”.
Visit www.acs.org/earthday for access to the resources related to this outreach program. There will be a new issue of Celebrating Chemistry, the newspaper publication for elementary-school students. It is first offered to local section CCED coordinators and then made available to the public. Please consider adding CCED as a local springtime activity!
NCW celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2007. We hope you read the extensive coverage in the December 17th issue of Chemical & Engineering News. NCW occurs annually during the fourth week of October and is an opportunity to promote the positive contributions of chemistry in daily life. This year’s NCW theme is “Having a Ball with Chemistry” and will focus on chemistry and sports. Check www.acs.org/ncw for new content, which will be continuously added.
The OCA and CCA annually develop many resources for CCED and NCW, including
hands-on activities, articles, and resources for students and teachers;
tips for facilitators of the activities;
templates, forms, and guidelines for outreach coordinators;
suggestions for making activities and events more accessible to all individuals;
fun products that can be purchased in bulk to give out at your events; and
press releases and templates for local section public relation chairs. Visit www.acs.org/chicos for the activities, articles, puzzles, and games that are available in Spanish.
Salutes to Excellence is an award program that gives ACS members an opportunity to conduct an event within their communities to recognize the positive impact on everyday life made by a practitioner of chemistry, a place of importance in chemistry, or a product of chemistry.
As an ACS member, you can help change the public’s perception of chemistry by participating in community outreach activities. Please contact your local section chair right away and volunteer your time, talents, and experience in one of the ACS-sponsored community outreach programs for 2008.
For more information about any of the OCA- and CCA-sponsored activities, please visit www.acs.org/education.
Good luck, and best wishes for a successful year filled with outstanding community outreach activities and programming within your local section!
Ingrid Montes
Chair, ACS Committee on Community Activities
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