Great Decisions
Our final meeting of the Mattapoisett Woman’s Club 2025 Great Decisions program found our group expressing renewed strength through the eyes of our guest speaker, Charlotte Van Voorhis, Community Engagement Manager of Envision Resilience, Corp., since 2023. A Yale graduate with a B.A. in American Studies and Sociolinguistics, she is currently pursuing her master’s degree in English at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English.
Each year Charlotte assembles the local advisory committee to help match university teams of student architects with local experts for their designs. In March 2024 several of our group attended the “Envision Resilience Exhibition: designs for Living and Rising Seas”, held at the New Bedford Art Museum sponsored by “Remain Nantucket,” a philanthropic organization that partners with city planners and design teams of student architects, institutions, and universities to help face climate challenges. The Exhibition featured “proposals of student designs demonstrating how infrastructure, housing, neighborhoods, and shorelines might be altered to cope with the ongoing challenges presented by climate change.” Having Charlotte discuss our chapter on International Cooperation on Climate Change and explore what it means for a resilient future in urban and coastal communities brought us the assurance of hope with a bright future. Thanks to all for your participation and eagerness to contribute to the success of our Community Educational Outreach program. You have been extremely generous to me this year and the years prior in your comments and appreciation. I again personally thank the Co-Chairs Ellen Stone, Anne and Art Layton for their assistance and support in keeping Great Decisions afloat this year. Many thanks to Susan Pizzolato, Interim Library Director, her staff Ann Shattle, Library Technician, Amanda Lawrence, Adult Services/Reference Librarian, and Kevin Thompson, Head Children’s Librarian. They were all invaluable to the smooth running of the eight-week program. Many thanks to Marianne Hickey and Nancy Holland for their continued supply of coffee, tea, and refreshments. I also appreciate the great photography of Robert Van Inwegen. The Mattapoisett Woman’s Club has kept this Foreign Policy program alive for over fifty years. We follow a text of eight Topic chapters with references and suggested readings and resources on each chapter with a companioned DVD. We donate to the Library any funds collected from fees that are left over. We will also donate the text books and DVDs for the library’s collection.
Co-Chairs: Ellen P. Flynn Ellen O. Stone Ann and Art Layton
