WHAT IT TAKES TO BUILD A CLIMATE MOVEMENT
Across the state, communities are restoring dunes, monitoring waterways and rebuilding living shorelines. Florida Climate Week is testing whether connecting those efforts can turn local progress into lasting statewide change.
VoLo Foundation President Thais Lopez Vogel works alongside children from EcoClub, an after-school program inspiring young environmental stewards through hands-on learning
When Thais Lopez Vogel, co-founder and president of VoLo Foundation, returned from New York Climate Week in 2021, one question stayed with her: Why didn’t Florida have a platform centered on its own climate risks, communities and solutions?
Across the state, nonprofits, volunteers, researchers, businesses and local governments were already restoring shorelines, monitoring water quality, educating residents and advocating for policy change. Yet many were doing this work in isolation, unaware that communities hundreds of miles away were developing solutions to similar problems.
“We go to South Florida and we go to Jacksonville, and there are people that are developing the same solutions, and they don’t know each other,” Thais said.
That realization led VoLo Foundation to launch the first Florida Climate Week virtually in 2021, with more than 40 sessions. By 2025, the initiative had grown to 83 free events attended by more than 1,800 people across the state. The 2026 edition, scheduled for Oct. 5–11, will again join residents and local leaders with those representing the business, nonprofit and science communities.
But growth alone does not automatically create a movement. The harder work begins after organizations put their events on the calendar, testing whether regional ideas can scale statewide, whether small groups can protect their autonomy while gaining resources, and whether the relationships built during Florida Climate Week will influence lasting policy. That work is the real proving ground.
“We don’t create the events,” Thais said. “We let every little neighborhood, or municipality, or every region—they know their problems more than us.”
To support these efforts, the foundation provides essential scaffolding like a shared calendar, marketing materials, visibility, and limited financial support while engaging partners months before Florida Climate Week begins. Under this framework, local stakeholders retain total autonomy to organize a workshop, university discussion, cleanup or restoration project.
Florida Climate Week is designed to bridge that geographic gap by connecting parallel efforts across the state. For Thais, the measure of success is personal: “I want my new friends to become old friends.”
Climate philanthropy often mirrors broader nonprofit inequality, where large, well-funded organizations easily take up the bulk of resources. To change that, Lopez Vogel argues that funders need to back what communities actually ask for, making sure local work gets support even if it flies under the radar.
“The most important thing is respecting the community and their leaders,” Thais said. For VoLo, connection begins with listening, then giving local work a larger stage. This approach demonstrates that grantmakers stretch their impact significantly further when they finance the less visible, high-priority work communities actually require.
From South Beach to the State Line
Along Florida’s thousands of miles of coastline, the Surfrider Foundation shows how local knowledge can move across the state without becoming a one-size-fits-all formula. The national organization works through more than 200 volunteer-led chapters and clubs, including 12 chapters and 11 high school and college clubs in Florida. These groups address beach access, plastic pollution, water quality and coastal resilience, bringing vastly different levels of regional capacity to each issue.
“Most of it is driven by the chapter, because they are the experts on the ground developing these relationships,” said Katie Bauman, Surfrider’s Florida policy manager. Regional staff offer templates, permitting guidance, insurance support and tested practices. Local chapters decide what fits.
South Florida volunteers, for example, have developed experience in dune restoration and coastal resilience. After seeing that work, Surfrider’s First Coast chapter in Jacksonville Beach began projects focused on removing invasive vegetation and restoring dunes. The Jacksonville chapter did not copy Miami – it borrowed lessons about permits, volunteers and restoration and adapted them to a different coastline and municipal relationships.
That exchange can save a newer group from starting at zero. Florida Climate Week gives a local chapter the space to contribute what it can handle, putting grassroots efforts on the exact same stage as much larger organizations and leaving the door open for groups of all sizes to make a localized impact.
That progression from a Saturday beach cleanup to legislative influence is what turns hands-on work into systemic change. As Katie emphasizes, projects like restoring a sand dune or testing water quality are never isolated acts, because they supply advocates with the empirical evidence required to shift conversations at the state level.
“Our network is then also taking that, whether it be restoration work, plastic cleanup and trash cleanup on the coast, ocean-friendly gardens, or water quality monitoring and testing,” she explains. “We then take that to policymakers to try to find solutions on the policy side as well.”
Pointing to Florida’s coastal resiliency legislation as a prime example, Katie avoids crediting any single event with swift, miraculous victories. Instead, she describes a patient, multi-year advocacy effort where a broad coalition leveraged local, nature-based solutions to secure recognition in state law. Statewide platforms pull that entire ecosystem together, linking the advocates generating ground-level proof with a wider network ready to carry those lessons straight to lawmakers.
Dune Restoration with the Surfrider Miami Chapter | October 10, 2026
A Seat on the Boat Can Change the Stakes
For Sofia Bond, the question of connection looks a bit different, rooted less in institutional networking and more in what happens when an ordinary resident encounters an environmental problem personally.
Bond spent years as a Miami Waterkeeper field technician, collecting samples and taking them to a lab. The work mattered, but the distance between the numbers and the public began to wear on her.
“I was getting very discouraged because I would go to sites and then I would go to the lab, and I wouldn’t really see what that work was doing,” she said.
She moved into public education because she wanted people to understand why the data mattered. Now Miami Waterkeeper’s community engagement coordinator, Sofia helps lead floating classrooms that bring participants onto Biscayne Bay to examine mangroves, seagrasses and coral reefs while learning how water monitoring connects to the health of the region.
The program, run with Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation, requires a boat that the county provides for a fee. Miami Waterkeeper cannot always absorb that cost for an event open to the public. Support connected to Florida Climate Week helps widen access. In practical terms, environmental engagement can depend on who can afford a seat on the boat.
Once people board, Sofia does not assume that everyone will care about Biscayne Bay for the same reason. Some participants care about wildlife and ecosystems. Others think about flooding, infrastructure, their families or the local economy. Instead of asking people to adopt one environmental identity, Bond looks for the point where the bay intersects with a value they already hold.
“There are so many reasons to care about Biscayne Bay,” she said. Her job is to connect “whatever value you have” to the importance of protecting it.
The economic stakes are substantial. A Miami-Dade County study found that Biscayne Bay-related activities generate about $64 billion in economic output, $24 billion in income and 448,000 jobs. But Sofia also remembers the quieter evidence, a participant from Kendall who rarely visited the bay told her, “Seeing it today changed something in me.”
Sofia Bond of Miami Waterkeeper | Floating Classroom | Oct 11, 2026
How Do You Keep People Coming Back?
For Florida for Good Tampa Bay, the goal is to build lasting momentum rather than hosting a single standout event. During Florida Climate Week the chapter will partner with Seaworthy Collective and Ecosphere Restoration Institute on a cleanup along the Hillsborough River. Volunteers will remove litter and invasive species and plant native vegetation to support a living shoreline. A smaller shoalgrass planting near St. Petersburg is planned for November.
The sequence matters. October provides an accessible entry point; November gives volunteers and partners a reason to reconnect after the spotlight moves on.
Florida for Good began in 2018 with a mission to increase the number of certified B Corporations in the state. Florida had only three certified B Corps at the time, according to Lorin Augeri, communications director for the For Good Movement. Today that number is approaching 60. The nonprofit has since grown into a network connecting businesses, nonprofits, educators, volunteers and community leaders through chapters in Miami, Tampa Bay and Orlando.
“We’ve become this connector, this hub—mentorship, academics, collective action,” Lorin said.
The recently relaunched Tampa Bay chapter will host a Florida Climate Week event for the first time in 2026. Florida for Good will coordinate and promote the Hillsborough River project, Seaworthy Collective will provide funding and logistical support, and Ecosphere Restoration Institute will contribute restoration expertise and access to native plants.
Success will mean more than the amount of litter collected. Partners will also examine whether native plants survive, invasive species return, volunteers remain involved and other organizations join future projects.
“Being able to continue to collaborate with them is a success to me,” said Miguel Maysonet, a community leader with Florida for Good Tampa Bay.
After the Week
When Florida Climate Week ends, participating organizations return to the year-round work of finding funding, volunteers and partners. The real test is whether the relationships formed during the week continue after the spotlight fades.
Florida’s climate risks cross county lines, but people experience them locally – in a flooded street, an eroding beach, a damaged seagrass bed or a riverbank choked by invasive plants. Florida Climate Week does not ask communities to surrender that local knowledge. It asks instead whether the people holding it can find one another sooner, share what works and keep showing up after the event is over.
For Thais Lopez Vogel, that responsibility is also personal. She thinks about what her children will inherit and what she will be able to say she did with the information available to her.
“That’s going to be my legacy to them,” she said. “That I did something that I didn’t just know the problem was there, but spent every day looking for solutions and acting on them.”
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