Great Lakes Islands Summit 2024

September 22nd - 25th, 2024

The 2024 Great Lakes Islands Summit (September 22-25, 2024) will be the fifth conference of the Great Lakes Islands Alliance (GLIA). This year’s event is hosted by Les Cheneaux Islands, and will be based in Cedarville/Hessel, MI. We are excited to have an agenda that includes a boat tour of the archipelago of 36 islands and discussions of critical issues including environmental protection, communication, economic development, schools, and more. The $150 registration fee includes access to two days of speakers and breakout discussions, meals, and field trips including the boat tour. The event will begin at 6pm on Sunday, September 22, with reception and dinner, and conclude by noon on Wednesday, September 25. Any island residents and advocates are welcome to attend. The annual summit also serves as the member meeting of the Great Lakes Islands Alliance (GLIA), a bi-national network of Great Lakes islands communities.

Additional information on how to get to the summit, where to stay, and more will be included in your summit confirmation email. For questions and more information, please contact Peter Huston at phuston@stewardshipnetwork.org

We hope that you can join us! Please register soon, space is limited. 

About GLIA:

"The Great Lakes Islands Alliance encourages relationship building, fosters information exchange, and leverages resources to address shared challenges and embrace opportunities to benefit islands."

The Great Lakes contain the largest, most diverse collection of freshwater islands in the world. Of the 32,000 islands, nearly twenty continue to host communities of people, typically a mix of year-round and seasonal residents and visitors. 

While present-day island communities are uniquely distinct from one another in character, traditions, and geography, they share a number of complex, inter-related challenges, including: access to public services and quality education; supporting a diversified economy; managing natural, cultural, and historical resources across public and private boundaries; and changing demographics (size, age, seasonality, ownership, economic status, etc.). 

These challenges are hurdles, not immovable barriers. In fact, some island communities have already independently developed their own “island solutions to island challenges.” Island communities are finding they often have more in common with one another than to their adjacent mainland. There is great value in islanders learning from other islanders about best practices that work, as well as those that don’t.