Author, Affiliation, Date:
Herb Caponi, Energy Forum of Western Pennsylvania, Nov 1, 2006
Body:
On October 25, 2006, our group, with its partner, Mount Lebanon Public Library, had its first community outreach event. We showed the DVD End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream at the Mount Lebanon Public Library in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
We considered the event to be a huge success.
We put a lot of work into the event, including publicizing the event, but the attendance exceeded our wildest expectations. We had over 80 people attending, and had to request additional chairs from the library's maintenance staff to seat everybody. Luckily, the room was large enough to hold everyone. About half of those attending returned our surveys, and we obtained over 30 snail/email addresses. We're going to give you the results in a moment, but first we would like to tell what we did.
It worked for us and will work for you.
First, we met up with a librarian who was enthusiastic about our idea. She provided the room and equipment use at no charge, and publicized the event through her channels. As she was planning other events on environmental and energy issues, she agreed to have the library co-sponsor our event. She has also asked us to submit additional events for library showings. We cannot praise her too highly.
Find someone in your community who has an established presence and wants your event to succeed; you are then halfway home.
The rest was just a lot of excellent work by our members, all who pitched in, looked to see what needed to be done, and did it. We had people who initiated and kept contact with the librarian, designed extremely professional posters and hand out cards, handed them out to individuals and posted them in businesses and public bulletin boards, church announcements and bulletin boards, contacted their email lists, and asked them to pass it on, and just plain talking up the event to anyone who didn't run when it was brought up. Everyone showed initiative and energy in coming up with helpful ideas and executing them. It was true teamwork.
Find the people in your community who care about the issues of energy use, global warming, and sustainability, and take it from there.
We repeat, it worked for us and will for you.
Now our survey results for future programs, in order:
1 Reducing Energy Use in Your Home and Yard;
2 New Choices For Transportation, What Are They?;
3 Food Choices: How Are Energy and Food Connected
and What Are Our New Choices? Can I Grow My Own Food?;
4 Technology Fixes-What Will and Won't Work
and When Will They Be Ready?;
5 Solutions in the Community-How to Get Ready;
6 Global Warming and Peak Oil-Connected?;
7 Water Scarcity, The Next Resource Crisis
and How It Relates to Energy Use;
8 Peak Oil and Energy Resources
A Deeper Discussion of the Issues;
9 Alternatives to Gasoline-Are They Viable?;
10 New Living Styles-Learning to Adjust Through
Simpler Living, Making New Priorities, and Other Life Choices.
The scores were computed from one point per checkmark for each of the 10 categories. We originally asked people to rank them but so many just used checkmarks or skipped some that we felt counting each response as a checkmark, and not attempting to mix weighted and unweighted information was the most accurate summary of the data.
We also asked for audience suggestions. The following were suggested: 1) More Movies, 2) Limit World Population, 3) How to Reach More Citizens, and 4) Show Entire Film (We had to cut off the ending credits due to time restrictions; however, the film is long and the library had to strictly adhere to closing time).
We appreciate any comments, or if you need any more information, please leave a message at our blog.
Author, Affiliation, Date:
Herb Caponi, Energy Forum of Western Pennsylvania, Nov 1, 2006
Teaser:
Our group's first event was a huge success. We exceeded our most optimistic expectations with over 80 people attending. If you would like to see how we did it, keep reading.
Body:
On October 25, 2006, our group had its first community outreach event. We showed the DVD End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream at the Mount Lebanon Public Library in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
We considered the event to be a huge success.
We put a lot of work into the event, including publicizing the event, but the attendance exceeded our wildest expectations. We had over 80 people attending, and had to request additional chairs from the library's maintenance staff to seat everybody. Luckily, the room was large enough to hold everyone. About half of those attending returned our surveys, and we obtained over 30 snail/email addresses. We're going to give you the results in a moment, but first we would like to tell what we did.
It worked for us and will work for you.
First, we met up with a librarian who was enthusiastic about our idea. She provided the room and equipment use at no charge, and publicized the event through her channels. As she was planning other events on environmental and energy issues, she agreed to have the library co-sponsor our event. She has also asked us to submit additional events for library showings. We cannot praise her too highly.
Find someone in your community who has an established presence and wants your event to succeed; you are then halfway home.
The rest was just a lot of excellent work by our members, all who pitched in, looked to see what needed to be done, and did it. We had people who initiated and kept contact with the librarian, designed extremely professional posters and hand out cards, handed them out to individuals and posted them in businesses and public bulletin boards, church announcements and bulletin boards, contacted their email lists, and asked them to pass it on, and just plain talking up the event to anyone who didn't run when it was brought up. Everyone showed initiative and energy in coming up with helpful ideas and executing them. It was true teamwork.
Find the people in your community who care about the issues of energy use, global warming, and sustainability, and take it from there.
We repeat, it worked for us and will for you.
Now our survey results for future programs, in order:
1 Reducing Energy Use in Your Home and Yard;
2 New Choices For Transportation, What Are They?;
3 Food Choices: How Are Energy and Food Connected
and What Are Our New Choices? Can I Grow My Own Food?;
4 Technology Fixes-What Will and Won't Work
and When Will They Be Ready?;
5 Solutions in the Community-How to Get Ready;
6 Global Warming and Peak Oil-Connected?;
7 Water Scarcity, The Next Resource Crisis
and How It Relates to Energy Use;
8 Peak Oil and Energy Resources
A Deeper Discussion of the Issues;
9 Alternatives to Gasoline-Are They Viable?;
10 New Living Styles-Learning to Adjust Through
Simpler Living, Making New Priorities, and Other Life Choices.
The scores were computed from one point per checkmark for each of the 10 categories. We originally asked people to rank them but so many just used checkmarks or skipped some that we felt counting each response as a checkmark, and not attempting to mix weighted and unweighted information was the most accurate summary of the data.
We also asked for audience suggestions. The following were suggested: 1) More Movies, 2) Limit World Population, 3) How to Reach More Citizens, and 4) Show Entire Film (We had to cut off the ending credits due to time restrictions; however, the film is long and the library had to strictly adhere to closing time).
We appreciate any comments, or if you need any more information, please leave a message at our blog.
Posting URL:
Comments
November 1st, 2006
Congrats on a successful event!
Hi Herb,
Thanks very much for posting this update. It's great to hear how things are going with the group and what the next steps are. Also great use of the formatting options for your post. It makes the text very readable. Documentation, although it can feel cumbersome at times, is a great learning tool and a great way to map group activities. A year from now, you can look back and reflect on your achievements - what worked, what didn't. It's also inspirational to for others to read what groups are doing. It's easy to lose motivation when you start thinking about how crazy the world we live in is, but it helps to be reminded that this is a growing collective effort that's gaining momentum every day.
cheers,
Shelby
Relocalization Network Coordinator Team