Chad Pregrake, President & Founder of Living Lands & Waters is our new hero!As personable as he is enthusiastic, this young man and his "take no prisoners" style of hands-on conservation charmed about 200 people at TLC's Annual Meeting Sunday January 27th.
Technical glitches with the audio visual equipment didn't phase him, and in some ways, probably made the program that much more charming!
Chad shared his story of how he started Living Lands & Waters, a non-profit organization that has been working for 10 years to clean up the Mississippi River and other major rivers in the United States.
As a teenager, Chad helped his brother, a commercial fisherman, with claming, spending hours in the dark, on the bottom of the Mississippi River blindly searching for clams. In the process, he learned how filthy the river was - decades-old piles of tires, barrels, cars, broken boats, refrigerators - you name it, he saw it.
As Chad researched how to tackle the problem, he found out that no one was working on it, and all the government agencies said there was no money to do anything about it.
So he decided to go the NASCAR route and seek corporate sponsors. As Chad quipped "I can wear patches!" (like the NASCAR drivers do). He picked up the phone and called Alcoa - one of the largest corporations in his hometown of East Moline (the Quad Cities of Illinois & Iowa). And he kept calling, and calling, and calling, until one day he got the President on the phone who agreed to give him 10 minutes.
Well, 10 years, and 24 million pounds of garbage later, Chad has had a huge impact! A houseboat and fleet of barges comprise the "World Headquarters" of Living Lands & Waters - a mobile operation that inspires hundreds of young people to volunteer as crew members to do the hard, filthy, and often dangerous work of cleaning up our nation's rivers!
The core message that Chad brought to our audience is that everyone can make a difference - you just have to make up your mind that that is what you want to do, and then go for it!
