Sea Island Cares

In 2022, Sea Island continued to build on its partnership with Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia and collaborated on a float for The Brunswick Christmas Parade. The float’s theme, ‘Together, we CAN end hunger,’ featured a seven-foot-tall Christmas tree, constructed from almost 450 cans of green beans, and adorned with ornaments and lights.

In 2001, Sea Island became a founding member of ‘Pennies for Preservation’ – well before the program officially launched in 2017. For over twenty years, Sea Island has instituted a voluntary $2/night donation that guests may opt in to during a stay at The Cloister or The Lodge. These dollars go directly to the St. Simons Land Trust and assists them in their efforts to live out their mission.

In 2021, Sea Island was approached by Glynn County Commissioner, Cap Fendig, regarding a proposal for acquiring and converting land in the Glynn Haven neighborhood on St. Simons Island to a county park and green space. It was a goal of Cap’s to upgrade and establish new parks across St. Simons Island. Glynn Haven, which has the highest density of homes with children attending local schools, made for a great choice to add a new mid-island park. Knowing how many Sea Island team members live in the neighborhood, and how many more would benefit from having a park like this in the area, the opportunity was a clear choice.

With 168 teams across both middle and high schools, Glynn County Athletics is comprised of over 2,500 student-athletes. Through sponsorships like ours, the county’s athletics program helps to cover the cost of uniforms, equipment, travel, and more so that these student-athletes will not have out-of-pocket expenses to participate in school-based sports. This year, Sea Island was proud to sponsor the ‘City Championship,’ a varsity football game between Brunswick High and Glynn Academy, with the winning team receiving the ‘The Sea Island City Championship Trophy.” Prior to the game, the ‘Mykal Ellis Championship Meal’ was sponsored by Sea Island, and fed over 300 athletes and coaches.

Every summer, the Sea Island nature team conducts daily dawn patrols and night walks for loggerhead sea turtle conservation. In 2022, Sea Island recorded its biggest nesting season with 144 nests. As we celebrated a record year for sea turtles, we also celebrated a record-setting year for our Adopt-A-Nest program. The Sea Island Adopt-A-Nest program allows donors to be assigned a specific nest and receive regular updates on its status. All donations raised as part of the program, which topped $58,000 in 2022, go directly to the Wildlife Conservation Fund within the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. These funds provide survey supplies, ATVs, predator screens, and nesting stakes for research centers throughout Georgia’s coast and barrier islands. 

To help provide for our Sea Island family in a time of need, The Sea Island Legacy Fund was created in 2020 to assist team members who may be experiencing a unique, severe, economic hardship. In thinking about creating this fund, Sea Island was approached by one of our Club members who challenged us to raise $50,000 by stating that they would match that number if we were able to achieve the goal. That number was quickly exceeded with generous donations from our membership community. Since the creation of The Sea Island Legacy Fund, it has distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars and will continue to raise money to provide for the Sea Island family.