Rural Community Builder Name: Aimee Thompson
Community: Newport, OR
Role: Public Information and Education Manager, Thompson Sanitary
What is one word or phrase that describes this person as an RCB: Investing Generationally
Recognized by: Lola Jones
Tell us a bit about what you appreciate about them as an RCB: I have great respect for people who come to the generational home of someone else and invest their own generational power in its future. Aimee Thompson loves Newport, Oregon in it’s entirety; even and especially the things that make it and many small towns like it beautiful, but challenging places to live. In her role as the Public Information and Education Manager for Thompson Sanitary, Aimee essentially pioneered public waste management education in the era of climate change, before we even had language to name it such. She has spoken to hundreds, if not thousands, of children about the basics of recycling in our public schools. When international recycling geopolitics limited our community to a fraction of the previously accepted recyclables seemingly overnight, Aimee mounted a public information campaign that was targeted, approachable and truly in the language of our community. She explained highly complex sanitation globalism and economics to the Rotary club one afternoon without breaking a sweat and I thought to myself, for the first but not the last time, that Aimee Thompson is going places.
