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Clean Air-Cool Planet is the Northeast's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to finding and promoting solutions to global warming.
  Outreach Audiences  |
MUNICIPAL LEADERS AND NEIGHBORS Municipal government officials and campus neighbors can be allies in achieving renewable energy installations or other greenhouse gas reduction initiatives. Town and county governments are attempting to undertake many of the same projects in their own buildings. Include them in your successes and learn from theirs! Conferences and lectures that are open to the whole community are a great way of increasing the public profile of your green or renewable initiatives. Here are two examples from Massachusetts campuses: Example 1: Bridgewater State College recently held a forum on the sustainability initiatives of the school and the other public campuses in the region. Read about the SE Connect Sustainability Summit. Example 2: Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts called the entire campus community to a lecture given by Bill McKibben. Read about it here. 2. Household Green Tips and Workshops Thinking about faculty, staff, neighbors, and municipal leaders also as homeowners and helping them meet those green challenges is a great way of building capacity and help for the large-scale initiatives you hope to undertake on campus. Example 1: Mount Wachusetts’s “What’s Next?: Save Energy – Save Money” SeriesMount Wachusett Community College’s Sustainability program is reaching faculty and staff by hosting workshops and lectures on homeowner concerns.
3. Local Press Invite the local press to your sustainability events, renewable energy installations, etc. Local press pieces can be an important way of informing regional leaders and neighbors. Example 1: STCC connects with neighbors through frequent coverage in local papers. Click here to see a recent article about STCC’s renewable energy course offerings. Example 2: Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts released this press release when its PV array went on line. 4. Local Schools Municipal leaders and community members are parents! Keep them involved in campus green initiatives by including local schools and young students in your campus efforts. Example 1: UMASS Dartmouth’s Sustainability Camp Example 2: Mass Maritime’s Marine Environmental Symposium . . 5. National Press and Surveys The list of surveys and national magazines covering and ranking college and university sustainability grows by the day. Those undertaken by the Sustainable Endowments Institute and the National Wildlife Federation get a great deal of attention, but so do many others. To stay up to date on surveys and national press stories on sustainability, check out the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability’s 2007 Digest. In it, the section “Sustainability in the Media” has a compendium of the biggest articles and surveys of the year. Find it on-line at: http://www.aashe.org/publications/digest.php The research for sustainability features often begins where you or I would – with a Google™ search. Issuing frequent press releases and updating your website with your green intiatives, renewable energy courses, and sustainability events is a great way to increase your national green exposure. 6. Ribbon Cuttings and Study Tours Take advantage of the natural interest in new renewable energy installations and green buildings by hosting ribbon cuttings and study tours. Since so many businesses, municipal leaders, students, and faculty wish to visit installations or new buildings, these tours can be a great way of reducing the number of visits so that your campus’s facilities manager can do things other than lead tours! Example 1: The ribbon cutting for Cape Cod Community College’s LEED Silver Lorusso Building was actually an electric cord cutting! The building’s tour was supplemented by this brochure. 7. Website Information and links on the college’s home page is a great way to inform your local community about campus greening and renewable energy efforts. Both Cape Cod Community College and Greenfield Community College have made explicit links to green efforts on their websites. Example 1: Greenfield Community College . Example 2: Cape Cod Community College Tell Us Your Outreach Story! |
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