“Too Cool for School” Enrichment Programs
Teachers and parents donning polar bear heads is inherently fun and effective in getting the attention of the K-8 crowd. If you can snag just ONE assembly hour to kick off this grassroots green program for climate change, KIDS can take it from there, bringing home Cool the Earth influences for micro-change into every household.
Social change agents have learned the hard way that adapting kid-friendly programs into ‘core curriculum’ is a time sink, whereas schools embrace participation as ‘enrichment,’ since it’s no hassle for teachers, ‘apolitical,’ and take place in an informal, volunteer environment with programs that are ready to run.
At Shaping Youth, we use the exact same child-driven empowerment model for counter-marketing junk food, as kids ‘upsell’ the message to parents in show-n-tell form…Ah, but “does it work,” and how do you ‘do it’ you ask?
Earlier this year on ECP you heard about Cool the Earth motivating over 6,000 families to make over 10,000 environmental changes impacting their carbon emissions, saving more than 8 million pounds of carbon from going into the atmosphere, (the equivalent of taking 750 cars off the road) and championing change in 25 Northern California schools…
Now, the nonprofit is funded well enough to expand its reach with free kits to 100 schools nationally, ramped and ready to roll out. (complete with polar bear and Mr. Carbon funky costumes, a mother nature garland, the works) They’re hoping to pay it forward from coast to coast as a positive model of environmental change that bridges from school to home to community, to maximize engagement in a ripple effect.
With last week’s Congressional passage of the NCLI Act encouraging students’ eco-literacy by getting kids outdoors for life lessons in applied sciences, Cool the Earth could be an ‘E-ticket’ to a turnkey eco-educator program that promotes a win-win for the planet while educating kids on ways to rise above global warming…
Empowering children to make a difference? Educating kids on the basics of climate change 101? Enabling them to ‘see the change’ firsthand by engaging the entire family in reducing their carbon footprint?
How cool is THAT?
I interviewed co-founder/executive director Carleen Cullen and am so excited about our aligned missions and methodology that we’ll probably end up partnering our two orgs, since we both firmly believe KIDS can be the conduit for sustainable social change. Both of us started as ‘one mom, one voice, one mission’ and both of us are implementing cause-marketing via entertainment tactics to make the learning fun!
“Marketers know that KIDS influence parents, we’re just taking the same dynamic and applying it to global warming,” said Carleen Cullen.
Ahem, gee…sure sounds familiar! It’s about time we flip that nag factor on its’ ear, so kids use the dreaded ‘pester power’ to initiate positive change in households (twisty bulbs, power-down computers, turn off the car idling at school drop-off etc.)
Cool the Earth kids are given (recycled) ‘action coupons’ at the assembly to take home, implement, and reward the family’s baby steps by tracking their progress, using peer to peer challenges to instigate competition intra-district, by classroom, by neighborhood, by sports team, however you want to implement change!
Data entry on the main website by the parent-coordinator enables kids to see their ‘big picture’ impact contributing to the others partipating across the country as well.
Using education as motivation, kids FEEL the hope and promise of reversing the climate crisis, turning daily deeds and personal choices into actions that are doable, sustainable, and ultimately, are ‘marketing hope!’
Face it, jaded adults could use a boost of eager enthusiasm, often best recruited to learn these life skills by youth themselves…after all, they’ll be around this planet longer than we will, so they’re not only the future stakeholders, they’re the promise for the planet.
These triplet teens that launched Polar Bear Nation are a case in point…Apathy and overwhelm is trumped by activation and doability! Since influence streams flow both ways between kids and adults, it makes sense that the action cycle spins both ways too. As David Orr said, “When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves.”
So whether it’s Cool the Earth imparting their nuggets of green, or Shaping Youth counter-marketing nuggets of processed poultry, I say we engage kids as catalysts for household change toward a holistic, healthier, more natural view of the earth as an inter-connected whole.
What do you think? Do kids initiate change in your home? Do they influence your words, deeds and actions?
Visual Credits: Cool The Earth.org, Polar Bear Nation.com, (photo of teen triplets, Emma, Connor, & Hayley Gilbert above)
[...] more on “pester power” go to here. Evidently some nut-root driven CA initiative that instruct children to go home and nag their [...]