Hello, I'm Tom Romido from the Western Cairo Gautobon Society in Cleveland, Ohio. In this short video, I'd like to educate and inform the Audubon community in Ohio about the Council of Ohio Audubon chapters, or COAC. COAC existed 30 or 40 years ago and was active for several decades, but about a decade ago it became dormant. The purpose of COAC was to get the chapters together and learn how to strengthen the chapters through interaction and mutual projects. Well time is elapsed and it's time to try and reinvigorate COAC. Right now, the 15 chapters in Ohio are essentially operating as independent islands. Without interaction with each other or the National Audubon Society. What we, Western Cairo Gautobon Society, wants to do is spearhead an initiative to reinvigorate COAC and bring the chapters back together. Now he might ask, well what is that to us as individual chapters in Ohio? Well we, Western Cairo Gautobon, believe that if individual chapters can strengthen themselves and collaborate with all the other chapters, they will become stronger. And thereby support the National Audubon Society's strategic priorities of creating bird-friendly communities. I want to enumerate some of the essential elements of a strong Audubon chapter and those things that we want to work on in a future workshop with all the chapters. These things are growing membership, recruiting members, recruiting volunteers, improving relationships, communications, and interaction with each other, improving member involvement, learning how to ask for help with projects, learning how to create and complete conservation projects, and learning how to raise funds. By getting the chapters together and drilling down on all of these areas in individual work sessions, people who come to this workshop can benefit and learn how to strengthen their chapter. And we hope that this event will occur in the spring of 2018. We're working hard to build a network with all the chapters in the Ohio Audubon community now. We encourage all the chapters to come to the table. So we hope that you will keep your eye on the Internet and future communications from Western Cairo Gautobon about this project. And we hope to see you there next year. Thanks for listening.