For almost 50 years, Southface has done a little bit of everything. The nonprofit brings sustainable practices to advocacy, education for trade workers, design consulting, facilities grants, community planning and more.
But their broad reach comes with a downside: Talking about the Atlanta-based nonprofit’s work.
“We have so much difficulty sharing our story and communicating our story,” Southface Executive Director Nathan Bessette said.
Bessette has worked with Southface in various roles for the past six years. Nine months ago, he took over as the organization’s Executive Director. He said the team can geek out for an hour over spray foam insulation and then “lift up the next generation of the workforce.”
The challenge is talking about it. So, Bessette is moving toward a “story-oriented” approach — and he started with the annual Southface Visionary Awards on Oct. 15 at the Georgia Aquarium.
At the annual sustainability awards, the nonprofit handed out its Argon Award of Excellence to Kim Bednarek for leading efforts to secure UNESCO World Heritage Site status for the Okefenokee Swamp. It marks the first time Southface has presented the award to someone outside of the Atlanta sustainability network.
“The ethos of the work she’s doing, the work of the Okefenokee, just really felt similar to Southface,” Bessette said.
Okefenokee Swamp is North America’s largest blackwater swamp, stretching across southeastern Georgia and northern Florida. Across 400,000 acres and over 40 years of restoration work, the swamp was designated Georgia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It’s the first natural UNESCO designation in the United States in 30 years. Some call it the “wildest place left in Georgia.”
“In many ways, it is one of Georgia’s best kept secrets as an asset for the state and the citizens of the state to go visit and experience,” Bessette said.
At the award ceremony, Bednarek recognized the decades of preservation work that went into earning a UNESCO designation.
“The science was never the hard part,” she said. “The hard part was building a coalition patient enough and broad enough to hold steady the whole way.”
She accepted the award as a “commitment” to ongoing work in sustainability. The swamp already earns more than $90 million a year in visitor spending, but the designation will likely double the number of yearly visitors. The swamp isn’t quite ready to handle high traffic to its two-lane dirt road entrance.
So Bednarek and her team are creating the Okefenokee Experience: “The new front doors to the swamp,” with entries in every county, a nature center at Okefenokee Swamp Park, a cultural history museum and a dark sky observatory.
It took 44 years, but the “sweet tea” waters and sprawling swamplands will now be a preserved global destination. It’s the type of story Southface wants to spotlight. Bednarek took it further: ”Let’s make the Okefenokee experience a Southface story.”
She challenged the nonprofit to bring their sustainable building science to the swamp, with potential for a nature center that manages its own water, or facilities that can withstand high heat and fire.
“Help us showcase rural Georgia to the new world,” Bednarek said.
She said Southface is like argon, the gas that slows the transfer of heat out of glass windows. “Often invisible, rarely recognized, but steady in every season.”
“You help remarkable places endure, and you help the people alongside them share in what comes next,” Bednarek added.
As for Southface, Bessette said the organization will keep up its work on the “fundamentals,” celebrating community leaders and keeping up the movement of sustainability in Atlanta.
