1. Overview
WHAT IS COMPASS?
COMPASS (Comprehensive plan Outreach for Meaningful Public Action & Sustainable Solutions) is an interactive, informative climate exercise, designed to engage community members in conversation and mutual learning about climate change in San Juan County. One of our goals is to gather meaningful comments for the Climate Element of the Comprehensive Plan and empower future engagement.
Developed by a small team led by Faith Van De Putte, Chom Greacen and Nikyta Palmisani through the Madrona Institute and in partnership with Friends of the San Juans and family resource centers, COMPASS is supported by a Department of Commerce grant to expand public participation in the Comprehensive Plan process.
To learn more about COMPASS, click here for a more detailed description of COMPASS and its framework.
*NEW* You can now download COMPASS materials (presentation slides, card decks, and facilitation notes) so you can use them as a resource for starting conversations with your friends and family.
2. Activities
We have wrapped up four community-wide events:
LOPEZ: Friday February 21, 6-8 PM at Lopez Center for Community & the Arts
SHAW: Monday March 3, 3:30-5:30 PM at Shaw Community Building
ORCAS ISLAND: Sat March 8, 3-5 PM at Parish Hall
SAN JUAN: Sun March 9, 1-3 PM at San Juan Island Grange Hall
These sessions were a success. See our report below.
In addition, we held focus group meetings in collaboration with the SJC Department of Climate and Sustainability and family resource centers on San Juan, Orcas and Lopez islands.
3/28 San Juan (in English)
4/3 Orcas (2 sessions in English)
4/17 Lopez (in English)
4/24 San Juan (in Spanish facilitated by Melissa Montavo-Chavez)
5/14 Lopez (in Spanish facilitated by Melissa Montavo-Chavez)
We are also supporting the SJC Department of Climate and Sustainability to do youth outreach using COMPASS materials to facilitate climate conversations. These sessions, both in and out of schools, are led by youth volunteers who have gone through COMPASS sessions and have stepped up to become youth facilitators. Many thanks to Matilda Twigg, Nonie Prout, Clauda Costa and Lola Walker for taking on this role!!
3. Report
More than 1258 participants from Lopez, Shaw, Orcas, and San Juan have participated in 19 Climate COMPASS sessions. Islanders contributed over 500 hours of in-person discussions and generated 960 ideas to shape the county's climate, housing, transportation, energy and forest policies which we gathered and compiled into the COMPASS Final Report (93 pages, 9.6MB).
Or download our Main Report (2.9 MB, 15 pages) and Appendix (6.8 MB, 78 pages) separately which details all the comments gathered.
4. Links & Resources
Useful links & resources
SJC: Adopted Climate Element
SJC: Adopted Updated Comprehensive Plan (effective 3/13/2026)
5. Contact
Questions & Comments
Please contact us if you have questions/comments.
Email: climatecompass.sjc@gmail.com