The Green Meeting Industry Council kicked off its 2015 Sustainable Meetings Conference, taking place June 17–19 at the Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, with a sandwich-making CSR activity to benefit the Atlanta Children's Shelter.
Participants made over 300 sandwiches for the shelter, which is located at the North Avenue Presbyterian Church and was founded in 1986 by the Junior League of Atlanta. The Shelter provides free, quality day care, emotional support, an educational curriculum, and focused social services for homeless children and their families. The activity was sponsored by Spread the Good.
The SMC's educational program began Wednesday afternoon with keynote speaker Laura Turner Seydel, chairperson of the Captain Planet Foundation, a non-profit established by her father, Ted Turner, to fund environmental stewardship projects in schools and the community. In 2007, Forbes magazine named Atlanta the most polluted city in the U.S. and the asthma capital of the country. “We have gone from worst to 16th best," said Turner Seydel, noting that it is the current mayor’s mission to move the city into the top ten by 2020.
Turner was the first to talk about Atlanta's journey toward becoming more sustainable, but the theme was prevalent throughout the week in a variety of education sessions that shared best practices with other communities, hospitality establishments, and meeting professionals to becoming more sustainable.
