Steps to success - Click on Video for details:
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Step 1
Buy one book and review it with your team and the school Principal
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Step 2
Schedule Family Night for 4/22/22 - Reserve the gym or cafeteria
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Step 3
Promote Family Night with presentations in classrooms
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Step 4
Send e-mails and notes home asking for a response from parents
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Step 5
Estimate number of families who will get involved
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Step 6
Order enough books for all expected families
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Step 7
Hold Family Night and pass out books
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Step 8
Join Green Team Superheroes or Navigator Scouts or start a Green Action Club at your school
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Step 9
Hold additional Family Nights for team building
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Step 10
Build in continuation - recognition for families, publicity, ties to local green vendors.
Complete Video Script
I’m Dave Finnigan, the first Green Actioneer, but certainly not the last. Together with over 60 sustainability students at University of Central Florida, and Jim Haynes, a marvelous artist, we’ve created The Green Actioneers Family Action Guide. It is the definitive guide to “going green”, saving money for families and creating a clean and green future for everyone.
We’ll be launching the book in elementary, and K-8 or maybe even K-12 schools all over the US on Earth Day, April 22, 2022, and we hope you and your school will help either on that date or later. Here are the steps any “green-hearted” parent in the school can take to help generate a successful launch.
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Step 1
Get one book and review it (and this video) with your team and with the school Principal – The Green Actioneers Family Action Guide is a story about three diverse families whose kids are in the same classroom at Watson Elementary. Bobby's family lives in an apartment building in the center of the city and they walk or catch the bus everywhere they go, Lakesha and her brother Jamal live in a big house in the suburbs with a 3-car garage and Ken Chen and his brother Mike live on a mini-farm on the edge of town. Toward the end of the book, we find out about a 4th family, when Awinita, whose name means "little fawn" in her native American language shows up in the classroom. Her small indigenous sub-community is not just sustainable, they are regenerative adding oxygen to the air, raising their own food, building soil and keeping the river that flows through the city clean.
Notice that the book includes a coloring book feature for the youngest kids, relevant word games and puzzles for older kids, over 100 quotes about the environment from notable people and over 100 Actions that families can take, described in English and Spanish. There's even a Where's Waldo feature. Readers can search for two little space aliens, Kandou and Kantdou who are somewhere in every picture and are debating whether humans are up to the task of creating a clean and green future.
The Green Actioneers Family Action Guide is intended to serve as a "cookbook" for families who want to save energy, water and money. Once you have a book and a team of a few families, plus agreement from the principal or other school authority, you're ready to move on. -
Step 2
Your second step is to Schedule Family Night on Earth Day, April 22, 2022 or on any day thereafter - Make sure you Reserve the gym or cafeteria and alert the custodial staff to remove the chairs and tables, because everyone will be sitting on the floor. We've found that it is important to make this a stand-alone event, not to combine it with other activities or social functions.
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Step 3
STEP 3 is to promote Family Night by someone (maybe you) going to classrooms and getting kids (and teachers) excited about the book. When you start going around to classrooms it may help to pre-order enough books to pass out to show students what they will be getting if they come to Family Night. Talk about the books collect them at the end of your demonstration and go on to the next classroom.
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Step 4
The 4th step is to Send e-mails and notes home asking for a response from parents that they will come to the event and/or order a book. Parental awareness and participation are the key to success with this program. The program is for the whole family and so is the book.
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Step 5
5th step is to use the responses you get from families to estimate the number of books you will need for Family Night
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Step 6
6th step is to order enough books for all these expected families (plus a few extra)Please order books in lots of 15 because that is how they come packaged, 15 to a box. Plan to prepay $10 plus $5 for shipping and handling for each book. Don't worry, you'll make you money back on Family Night.
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Step 7
STEP 7 is to Hold Family Night and pass out books as families come into the room. They sit on the floor in a family huddle with their book and look for actions they can take.
The steps to take at Family Night are described on pages xii and xiii in the front part of the book. Families take their books home for $20, so your program should be self-supporting from the start.
Also, Family Night is a great way to build your "Green Action Team" at the school so you can continue the program indefinitely. -
Step 8
The 8th step is to become part of a national movement by joining either Green Team Superheroes or Navigator Scouts, or simply create your own Green Action club at the school and start meeting on a regular basis to help grow your program, attract additional families, and celebrate your accomplishments.
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Step 9
STEP 9 - Hold additional Family Nights or other activities ether in person or remotely, to find out what people have done and bring in more families. Maybe start a chart in the hallway where families can put up Post It notes to celebrate their accomplishments.
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Step 10
The 10th step is to set up a system to continually order and distribute additional books for new families. At these events you can ask for reports from families, and you can recognize families for their achievements. You should certainly Publicize what you have done within your school district and beyond so that more people know about the program and can replicate it at their schools. Finally, you can turn this program into a big fund-raiser for your school by Getting local vendors of green products and services to agree to give rebates to the school when families make purchases. These referral fees can be a great source of income for your Green Actioneers program at your school.
If you are joining the launch as a team not affiliated with a school, please modify these steps however you wish.
We ‘ll be holding Zoom meetings every Sunday at 2PM Eastern Standard time and if you want a link to that project, please let us know.
Thanks a lot – I’m Dave Finnigan, the first Green Actioneer, but certainly not the last.