Davitt Woodwell, President and CEO of the PA Environmental Council, this week announced the launch of the organization’s new website he called The PEC Channel to help fulfill the group’s mission to protect and restore the natural and built environments through innovation, collaboration, education and advocacy through partnerships with the private sector, government, communities and individuals.

The new website focuses on several areas of PEC’s work: Energy & Climate, Trails & Recreation, Watersheds and Policy.  A new PEC Blog will feature periodic postings on hot topics facing Pennsylvania.

A new monthly PA Environmentalist newsletter, which anyone can subscribe to by email, will replace The Forum, a member-only newsletter.

You can also subscribe to PEC’s new YouTube Channel featuring videos on PEC projects, programs, partners and activities.

PEC’s Facebook page and Twitter feed will also be continuously updated with the latest information on environmental issues facing Pennsylvania.

Woodwell announced the launch of PEC’s new web platform with this message--

Today, PEC launches its new website (pecpa.org): the centerpiece of a re-vamped system to communicate with our stakeholders, partners, and the public.  Created by Actual Size (actualsize.com) with the OPR Group providing project management, the site replaces our old platform that was reliant on outdated programming and just too much for a relatively small staff to keep up with.

This is meant to be much more than a website – we are calling it our “channel,” as close as we can get to “PEC TV.”

For me, websites are generally static media to which one goes to find an address, phone number, or someone’s bio. That limited functionality just won’t do when PEC has so much to say about Pennsylvania and our work here. 

The new site gives us a chance to show that we are not only wide-ranging in our interests, but also focused in our work and deeply rooted in our communities.

PEC’s audiences are diverse, and designing a platform for all to use meant thinking about how to meet the needs of a trail planner in Franklin at the same time as a species advocate in Towanda and a green infrastructure fan in Bellefonte.

We think we got there.

You will find project updates, blog posts, video interviews, newsletter articles, policy updates, and more at pecpa.org. Within all of that information, it is our intent that you find something that moves you to action – whether it is on a policy issue, a trail project, an illegal dump clean-up, energy conservation practice, or greenhouse gas reduction.

Of course we also hope that you will support our work (feel free to click on that little “join us” icon available on every page).

It is pretty safe to say that no one and no organization accomplishes anything truly by itself. PEC is no exception.

Throughout our program pages and project updates you will find the names of other organizations, agencies, companies, and individuals working to make Pennsylvania an even better place to live, work, and play. These are some of our partners and I also encourage you to support their work.

The new site does not exist in a communications vacuum. We have loyal followings on Twitter (@PECPA) and on Facebook and I encourage you to follow us there.  (If you are a true glutton for punishment, you can even follow me on Twitter [@dwoodwell]). Rest assured that, like any nonprofit, we will continue to send email updates and newsletters, snail mail solicitations, and invitations to our signature events around the Commonwealth.

I encourage you to explore the new site and let us know your reactions. I hope that you will like it and come back for more than just our addresses.

As a final note, I leave you with an excerpt from an article that ran in the December 1996 issue of PEC’s Forum:

“In the last issue of the Forum, we reported that PEC has a home-page (also called a web-page) on the world-wide-web. Included on the PEC home-page are project updates from the regional offices, legislative updates, selected Forum articles, organization and membership information, a publications list, links to related sites, and an information request section. There is a lot to see on our home-page, and we plan to develop more! So check it out and let us know what you think.”

What’s old is new again.  Happy surfing.

12/29/2014