WakeUP Summer Reception Highlights Both The Challenges And Opportunities That Lie Ahead For Wake County
This past Wednesday evening, at Jiddi Space and Sitti Courtyard in Downtown Raleigh, we hosted our marquee fundraising event for the year, Changes: Opportunities & Challenges.
With well over 100 attendees showing up to support our mission of promoting good growth planning and sustainable, healthy communities throughout Wake County, it was an incredible night. The abundance of engaging conversations, fun prizes, interactive activities, and delicious food courtesy of Sitti made it better still!
We want to extend our sincerest gratitude to all our partners, sponsors, supporters, friends, family, and volunteers who joined us on Wednesday evening. It was a night we won’t soon forget. It’s only because of your generous contributions and support that we’re able to do the work we do.
A special thanks, too, to architects Eliza Montgomery and William Choi and saxophonist Gregg Gelb.
Eliza and Will, of the Raleigh-based design practice MontgomeryChoi, hosted an extremely popular (and fun!) interactive “Block Party,” which gave attendees the opportunity to build — quite literally — their own ideal city block and city.
Meanwhile, Gregg, who was one of six local musicians to receive the City of Raleigh Art Commission’s Medal of Arts Award in 2018, provided the night’s musical entertainment. His outstanding jazz duo did not disappoint!
Below are a few of our favorite highlights from the evening.
Changes: Opportunities & Challenges: WakeUP’s 2019 Summer Reception
Challenges, Opportunities, and Work Still To Do
Wednesday evening was an opportunity to celebrate everything we’ve done here at WakeUP over the past six months. And we’ve done A LOT!
Since March, we’ve organized a whole host of different public events to support public engagement and good growth throughout the county.
In March, we had our Education Forum, which brought together a panel of local experts to talk about the value of public education. In May, we organized an Affordable Housing Forum, where city and county staff provided updates on the affordable housing plans of Wake County and the City of Raleigh. During the same month, we also conducted Mobility May, our social media campaign to highlight all the ways to get around the Triangle without a car. And, of course, each month we’ve hosted WakeUP After 5, our series of monthly community meetings for residents to come out to chat and learn about new and ongoing developments in the region. These informal meetings have so far covered the continued roll-out of the Wake Transit Plan, NCDOT’s long-range 2050 Plan, and transit-oriented development along the New Bern Ave Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor.
In addition to these events, we’ve also been busy here on our website, publishing educational and informative blog posts that take an objective look at important issues of local concern — issues such as road safety for bicyclists and pedestrians (on average, roughly one bicyclist or pedestrian is struck by a motor vehicle in Wake County each day; click here for Part 1 and click here for Part 2) and how, given patterns of gentrification and concentrated poverty, neighborhoods throughout Wake County have changed over the past two decades.
It’s safe to say that we’re extremely proud of all we’ve accomplished during the past six months. However, we know our work is far from finished and that there’s still much left to do to promote and maintain smart, equitable growth throughout Wake County.
Indeed, as the title of Wednesday night’s event makes clear, the future holds many challenges.
Nonetheless, the future presents a wealth of opportunities, too. And with your continued support, we look forward to building on the momentum we’ve already created. We’ve never been more confident that, by working together, we’ll be able to help turn all the exciting opportunities that lie ahead for our region into reality.
So, from all of us here at WakeUP — THANK YOU for your continued support.
And moving forward, be sure to keep a lookout for all the exciting and informative events we have coming up, beginning with our Mayoral and Council Candidate Forums for the City of Raleigh and the Town of Cary. The first Candidate Forum will be for Raleigh City Council District C, on August 21st, from 6-8pm, at Passage Home, located at 513 Branch St. in Raleigh.
The best and brightest days for both Wake County and WakeUP Wake County are, without a doubt, ahead of us still.
One Last Thing: Don’t Forget About Our Exciting Raffles!
Finally, a reminder to those who attended our Summer Reception and entered one or more of our raffles:
We’ll announce the winners of our two $5 raffle prizes — Day Passes for the Hopscotch Music Festival and a mixology class for up to 6 people at FOUNDATION — on Friday, August 30th.
The winner of the $10 raffle for the M2S All Terrain Sport R500 Electric Commuter Bike (generously donated by M2S Bikes) will be drawn later, at our Hopscotch Day Party at Transfer Co. Food Hall on Friday, September 6th.
If you weren’t able to attend Wednesday’s event, you still have time to enter for a chance to win these great prizes. Click here to enter the $5 raffle and click here to enter the $10 raffle.
And, of course, you’re welcome to make a donation to WakeUP anytime by clicking here.