Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.

W&M Student Environmental Action Coalition

SEAC (http://www.wm.edu/sites/sustainability/getinvolved/seacvideoonsusta...) at my school is an organization specifically designed to encourage sustainability projects on campus and in the state.

The thing that I want to talk about specifically is that our focus can't only be ideas, but it must also be a way to get these ideas out to the public. SEAC does a great job of making sustainable projects EASY for people to participate in. We're living in the age of apathy in the US, and fighting apathy might actually be more difficult than fighting injustice. I'm going to spend a lot of my time on EVOKE figuring out ways to inspire others to action, because there is no way that social norms will be changed by changing the actions of just a few organizers. We need for our efforts to be accessible, popular, and easy. Sooner or later I'll get back to some of my research from the World Health Organization and their models for social norm change. For the time being, I'm just going to start brainstorming.

1. Examine your audience: Make sure that the ideas you come up with are accessible to the group you're trying to work with. For example, on my college campus it is really easy to target students with things that will be visible and popular. This can be anything from handing out aluminum water bottles to students free of charge (in order to decrease plastic use) to doing public pledges of environmentalism. You just need to make sure that things are easy and popular.

2. Examine your resources: There are more grants and scholarships for social change and social norming than you might expect. Don't be afraid to seek out more help that what is right in front of your eyes. Back to the smaller lens, make sure that you do use the things that are within your own grasp. Network, enumerate, and USE.

3. Media: The best thing that you can do in order to make a campaign popular is to advertise it. The internet creates a very easy medium for passing along creative content. Consider using things like facebook, twitter, and tumblr if you don't have access to sustainable hard-copy advertising. Also, creativity is paramount. Network in order to come up with designs that look professional and eye-catching.

4. DO: We can't always brainstorm for the sake of brainstorming. In my own personal experience, many organizers spend weeks trying to come up with an idea and end up black-balling everything that comes to the table, because no perfect idea has arisen. In reality, there is not perfect solution. Work with the flaws in a program and attempt to work around them. Know that something in your theory, something in your execution will not be perfect, and embrace that. If nothing else, it opens up the door for a conversation, and that can be more beneficial than all of the planning put-together.

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