INITIATIVES
The Carolina Ocean Alliance believes in the power of partnerships led by local people and guided by local and traditional knowledge to promote equitable, reciprocal, and sustainable community-driven solutions. We are committed to using our network-of-networks model to collaborate with local and regional partners as we work to solve the challenges facing our community and communities like ours around the world. To achieve this, our approach is based on community ecology where each individual and organization has a role to play and collaboration is necessary to promote a resilient and regenerative community.
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The Hope Summit is an annual conference and festival held in Charleston at the end of September to highlight multidisciplinary and intersectional challenges facing our world and celebrate community-driven solutions that create agency and hope for communities worldwide to adapt for a bright, regenerative, equitable future.
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We believe that to heal our world, and ourselves in the process, we must see ourselves as a part of the natural world, not apart from it. We must reframe our understanding of community to embrace its ecological definition of all interconnected life that sustains and regenerates itself within a shared locality.​
At The Hope Summit, we aspire to inspire three kinds of hope. The first kind comes from agency, the feeling that you have the knowledge, tools, or solutions to be the change you seek. The second comes from finding a welcoming and compassionate community that reconnects us with why we work to protect what we love. The third is the experience of being part of something bigger than ourselves and realizing that what we do in service to our community is enough.
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In 2025, The Hope Summit will explore how community-driven solutions can promote Resilience, Regeneration, and the emerging Restoration Economy. The future must include people because we are a part of this world and are responsible for protecting what is in danger, restoring what was lost, remembering what was forgotten, and uplifting the regenerative powers of our world to heal our planet, grow biodiversity, and forge a future in which our children and grandchildren can thrive.
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The Hope Summit 2025 organizers invite leaders and solutions practitioners from all walks of life, disciplines, and stages of their professional journey to join us in Charleston from September 24th to 28th to cultivate ideas, accelerate solutions, and inspire hope for the future of our communities and our planet.
Join us as we foster hope grounded in agency from solutions and lifelong learning through The Hope Summit Book Club. We will begin meeting quarterly in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2026.
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January to March | "Serviceberry" by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and "Phenology" by Theresa Crimmins
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April to June | "Rewilding the Sea" by Charles Clover, and "Saving the Wild South" by Georgann Eubanks
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July to September | "Shade" by Sam Bloch, and "Civic Ecology" by ME Krasny
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October to December | "The Rights of Nature" by David Boyd, and "What If We Get It Right" by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
To transform our world through community-driven solutions, we must invest in the emerging leaders and stewards of communities. At The Hope Summit, we are committed to developing and accelerating young emerging leaders through mentorship, workshops, equitable access, community, and scholarships for 75 students and early career professionals to receive fully-sponsored Conference Passes.
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Funds for The Hope Summit Next Generation Scholarships come from generous sponsorships and support by our partners like the Joanna Foundation and Austen & Gowder.
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The Creek Collective
As Wendell Berry said, “Do unto those downstream of you as you would have those upstream of you do unto you.”
The Creek Collective is a collaborative network of community groups like The MARSH Project and other Creek Champions who want to cultivate cultures of caring within their creek communities, while working with nonprofit, municipal, and community partners to protect and restore the health of their local creeks.
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Rather than thinking of where we live as neighborhoods, we can embrace an ecological understanding of how a watershed unites us. We are members of “Creek Communities,” where we share the same drainage basin with our neighbors, while interacting with the health and resilience of those upstream and downstream of us.
Through native plant and marsh restoration, arts and cultural programming, litter cleanups, recreational activities, and community adaptation and resilience workshops, Creek Communities can unite around their shared love of their creek while serving as part of a broader regional effort to live with water rather than in conflict with it.
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Each Creek Community will develop a unique visual identity beginning with a fold-out creek field guide and expanding to include a stamp for a Creek Collective Passport Book inspired by the National Parks Passport Book. By participating in an event in another Creek Community, Creek Collective members can add unique stamps and experiences in other parts of the community.
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​At each creek trailhead, Carolina Ocean Alliance will work with communities to install a little free library. From there, Creek Champions and community members can add other Civic Ecology projects like a neighborhood seed exchange, a post with shareable litter buckets, wayfinding and interpretive signage, and even more advanced options like a community tool shed or a solar-powered community fridge.
Are you ready to become a Creek Community Champion?
The MARSH Project
The Marsh Appreciation and Restoration Society for Happiness Project is a grassroots and community-based effort to preserve and restore our marshes. This hyperlocal stewardship group was founded by Dr. Blake Scott, Blake Suarez, and Joel Caldwell to protect Halsey Creek, one of the few remaining tidal salt marsh creeks on the Charleston peninsula. Their goal is to build a deep connection between their neighbors and the creek at the heart of their neighborhood through history and storytelling, visual art, native plant species restorations, clean-ups, and opportunities to build a culture of caring.
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In April of 2023, The MARSH Project became an official program of the Carolina Ocean Alliance.
Ghost Creeks
Inspired by Baltimore’s “Ghost Rivers” public art installations and self-guided walking tours, “Ghost Creeks” will promote resilience, smart city planning, and environmental justice by reintroducing current and future residents to the city’s buried waterways through a physical map, a digital story map, and interactive design.
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Sustainable Ocean Alliance Charleston
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Advocacy and Policy
We tirelessly fight for a healthy ocean and resilient ocean ecosystems, while fighting against the unsustainable systems that created the climate and biodiversity crises.
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We advocate for nature-based solutions and ecological planning as members of the Charleston Basin Flood Action Committee.
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We advocate for the protection of the world’s largest deep-sea coral system on Blake Plateau.
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We work at the municipal, state, national, and international levels, while also expanding ocean conservation and ocean literacy through the South Carolina Conservation Coalition Ocean Working Group, National Ocean Protection Coalition, Healthy Ocean Coalition, the Ocean Rights Movement, FutureSwell Creator Coalition, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, and the Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition.
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Sustainable Ocean Alliance Charleston
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Sustainable Ocean Alliance Charleston
Carolina Ocean Alliance hosts the local community hub of the Sustainable Ocean Alliance in Charleston, South Carolina. Through this hub, the COA works to develop the next generation of leaders, cultivate ideas, accelerate solutions, and promote opportunities for emerging young leaders from our region. We also seek to connect our local young professionals with their peers from around the world. Our goal is to develop, equip, and accelerate the next generation of leaders in our region.
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SOA Charleston sponsors the University-based SOA hub at the College of Charleston.