World Ocean Project World Ocean Project

Advice from the Innovators:  A summary of lessons learned in public engagement from year three of the Innovative Solutions Grants + Program (ISG+)

Our grantees from year three have completed their projects and submitted their final reports, which are filled with tips and lessons for other aquariums and zoos that share their interest in engaging visitors and advancing conservation.  Many thanks to NOAA for making these grants possible. Per your request, we’ve compiled this summary of the top line takeaways.  Links to their full reports with  more detailed results, can be found below. Help your audiences turn inspiration into action! In other words, don’t just tell visitors what you are doing, invite them into the effort and document their support! Kirinne Slaughter, who led efforts under the grant to the Saint Louis Zoo, wrote in her final report, “our results confirmed The Ocean Project’s finding that (visitors) do indeed expect, trust, and appreciate the advice that you have to offer them on how they could become part of the plastic pollution solution…not only were our guests willing to sign a pledge (90% of those asked did so) but some were willing to share that pledge and stay invested on social media”. This finding was echoed by Wei Ying Wong of The Philadelphia Zoo, who reported that, “in addition to pledging to take action (to reduce their home energy use), 54% of those who were asked to participate in the tracking study (agreed to) let us track their household energy usage!” In a powerful presentation about her project at the AZA Annual Conference, Wei Ying could be heard wondering aloud if we are aiming too low with our conservation asks – these results certainly seem to suggest that!   Seattle Youth CAN Empower youth to be conservation advocates. Instead of approaching youth as an audience for you to engage, ask youth to help you engage others, then hang on for the ride! Based on the experience of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Debbie Colodner strongly encouraged others to, “engage the power of young professionals or university students to help make the case,” which, in their case, was that, “millennial customers care about where their (seafood) comes from”. Kirinne at St. Louis Zoo also found this to be true, noting that, “one of the most exciting and successful parts of our campaigns was allowing the teens to experiment with the delivery of the #byetobags.” Notably, the team learned a lot not only about engaging visitors onsite, but, if you check out their final report also through social media, along with some bonus findings about the impact their onsite efforts had on guest behavior at their own gift shop. Eli Weiss of the Woodland Park Zoo shared similar advice, adding from his two years under the grant that “empowering youth leaders to develop public, and especially peer-to-peer, conservation engagement efforts is highly recommended and can lead to exciting new engagement strategies!” With one notable caveat, “that when teen leaders are developing public engagement efforts, their enthusiasm and ideas need focus to ensure successful implementation.” If you are interested in learning about youth engagement, look no further than the final report submitted by Eli and his partners at the Seattle Aquarium and Pacific Science Center. A group of TAYR congregation members during a community cleanup. Photo: National Aquarium Look beyond the impact you can have on individuals and consider community partnerships, especially when thinking of success at scale. Eli of Woodland Park noted that one of the primary lessons from their second year was to, “take the time to develop relationships with other organizations who have an overlapping interest in reaching youth and advancing conservation rather than doing it alone,” adding that, “zoos and aquariums can play a critical role in developing networks of youth conservation leaders, and in this electronic age don’t underestimate the power of in-person gatherings.” Debbie from the Desert Museum noted the incredibly positive response their project had from local restaurants, and advised others to, “work with interested chefs/owners to partner on strategies to build the local sustainable seafood (effort)”. If you’re interested in advancing sustainable seafood, or events that advance conservation, the full story of their efforts with local youth and local restaurants can be found here. Gabrielle Roffe and Curtis Bennett of the National Aquarium, who used a “pillar approach” to develop a truly inspirational partnership with their local community, advised, “take the time to familiarize yourself with the community, in both the physical and social sense (and) remember that building trusting community relationships is a two-way street. You have to get to know the community but you also have to give the community time to get to know you… from there focus on opportunities to create mutually beneficial goals in order to create a collaborative effort.” For anyone interested in community engagement, their final post is a must read! Our research tells us that when doing public engagement, start by giving your audience the solutions and then dive deeper into the details. So, audience, if you’re now inspired to go deeper, here are all of the links to their reports! Participants at Fini's Landing celebration of World Oceans Day Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum: Awarded $20,000 to engage university students in Tasting Sustainability, a community-based conservation initiative on the issue of seafood sustainability. Initial post Midterm post  Final post     TAYR Youth Group at a debris cleanup at Masonville CoveNational Aquarium: Awarded $25,000 for a project that engages the Hispanic community in a small Baltimore watershed on the issue of marine debris. Initial post Midterm post  Final post       Saint Louis Zoo: Awarded $15,000 to launch a project directed predominantly by teen volunteers on site and via social media with an emphasis on reducing the use of single-use plastic bags. Initial post Midterm post Final post   Youth leaders on stage Woodland Park Zoo: Awarded a second year of funding, at $30,000 to expand their leadership role with Seattle Youth Climate Action Network (CAN), an evolution of Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle Aquarium and Pacific Science Center youth programs.   Initial post (Transition between years) Midterm post Final post

Continue reading

ISG+ Final Report: Seattle Youth Climate Action Network is Looking Back and Planning Ahead!

This guest post by Eli Weiss of Woodland Park Zoo is the last in a 3-part series on their Innovative Solutions Grants+ project, exploring how teens in the Seattle area can empower each other and their peers for action on climate change. When the idea of Seattle Youth Climate Action Network was hatched in the fall of 2014, inspired by conversations with teens in Woodland Park Zoo’s ZooCorps program, we were looking for a new approach to engage local youth in the zoo’s mission and connect the dots between “learn…care…act,” and decided to apply one of the major lessons from the research by The Ocean Project: youth already care and want to turn their concern into action! With two years of support from the Innovative Solutions Grants+ Program, hundreds of teens have participated in the project, and together we have developed and tested a pilot campaign while creating and refining an innovative local network approach that has great potential for continued local growth. In fact, our experiment has blossomed into something that our institutions and local community value as a new approach to regional youth climate engagement, and we believe could serve as a model for other regions across the country! As mentioned in our last post, our goals for this past year have been to: Expand the networks reach locally through outreach and more inclusive programing, and Build on our initial successes with the Summer Transportation Challenge and Youth Climate Action Summit. Let me reflect on our successes and lessons learned for each of these goals as we wrap up our work under this grant. Growing the Network Face of Climate Action We have seen great interest in Seattle Youth CAN, and under this grant cycle alone more than 400 teens have signed up to get network updates and over 200 youth have attended one or more events since January 2016. For us this has been a great sign that there is a growing interest in Seattle Youth CAN among local teens. While some have heard about the network from peers or through other direct outreach efforts with which we have experimented, including tabling at events and broader social media presence including facebook, instagram, and twitter (See also our last post), our most successful approach was to identify and work with other youth programs where we had overlapping interests. Echoing a finding from our ISG+ peers at the National Aquarium, we learned that these relationships take time, but they are well worth the effort. We have been working with a range of community groups and agencies, many of who are eager to deepen our partnership through this project. For some groups there was immediate interest, while others took time to find the right opportunity for collaboration. An example of the latter is the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps, an environmental youth development program in SW Seattle that we have been encouraging to join the network since our 2015 summit. This year, we had more than 20 of their youth attend our summit!   Another relationship that we are excited about is with the University of Washington College of the Environment, a partnership that came about because our youth have expressed interest in increasing our focus on exploring climate related career pathways, so this past summer we co-hosted a college career panel at the UW that was attended by 50 teens and the College in turn also participated in our recent Summit. Our advice to other zoos and aquariums? Take the time to develop relationships with other organizations who have an overlapping interest in reaching youth and advancing conservation rather than doing it alone. An Ongoing Commitment to Youth Leadership The creation of a Youth Leadership Committee, made up of teen leads from the zoo, aquarium, and science center - has worked out especially well. The Committee helps to make significant decisions about the direction of the project and the focus of action campaigns and events this past year.  We feel confident that Seattle Youth CAN’s current direction reflects the needs and interests of Seattle-area youth. Since our launch, we have looked to our youth leaders to make major decisions impacting the focus of the network including: types of projects, the design and focus of action campaigns, and how we communicate with teens in the network. In turning over decision making to our youth leaders, we have learned that there is a fine balance between supporting youth driven ideas and having the capacity to help them be successful in their plans as I’ll describe below. Our advice to others? Empowering youth leaders to develop public, and especially peer-to-peer, conservation engagement efforts is highly recommended and can lead to exciting new engagement strategies! Youth leaders Lessons from the Transportation Challenge 2.0 For the 2016 Summer Transportation Challenge, we let our youth leaders develop the plan, which included an ambitious, and, in hindsight, overly ambitious, eight-week campaign with weekly events and social media challenges aimed at engaging other teens in fun activities and events that helped increase personal action and carbon reducing transportation choices. It all seemed great when our youth leaders formed their plans in the spring, but by mid-summer we realized that many of them didn’t have as much time as we anticipated amidst busy summer obligations to fully support the challenge. This meant that our staff were tasked with carrying out much of what was set in motion by our youth leaders. We were expecting that an increase in the frequency of events and the length of the challenge as compared to last year would lead to many more teens getting involved.  The challenge ended up with some bright spots but fell short of those expectations. The biggest bright spots were that the challenge had a positive impact on participants (See for example Masayuki’s blog post) and the environment, with more than 90 teens attending summer events and challenge participants logging 7,513 miles of not driven alone, which equals 3,214 pounds of CO2 saved. In addition, the continued transportation focus allowed us to expand on our partnership with a key partner, King County Metro Transit, and our teen leaders worked with the agency to develop messaging, including this video, to encourage youth to utilize public transit and make the connection between riding the bus and fighting climate change. As for what didn’t work, we learned that having events during the week made it hard for some teens to attend given other obligations. We were also surprised that the weekly social media contests did not lead to more participation, and how some teens in the network, even though they had developed the ideas, were not interested in posting challenge related things on their own social media channels. Lastly, we are rethinking the timing of the transportation challenge in our calendar of events, and our teen leaders are already talking about focusing on the school year, rather than the summer, in 2017, when student schedules are more predictable. And, of course, we learned that with limited time and resources, we realized the need to either limit plans or add staff to support the ambition and growth of our youth leadership and the action campaigns and events that they develop. Our advice to others?  We learned that when teen leaders are developing public engagement efforts, their enthusiasm and ideas need focus to ensure successful implementation   Summit Success On October 2, Woodland Park Zoo hosted the 2nd Annual Youth Climate Action Summit and brought together 100 Seattle-area teens interested in fighting climate change and more than 20 climate focused community leaders. This culminating full day event was organized and led by eleven youth leaders and Woodland Park Zoo staff. And learning one of our own lessons from the Transportation Challenge, we were sure to create clear and realistic expectations for youth leadership, which lead to an event that maintained a very youth driven feel, while having enough staff support to make it all come together and run smoothly. Youth leaders on stage Youth who participated in the dynamic day of learning and action attend 39 local schools and a range of youth programs, and for 70% of attendees it was their first Seattle Youth CAN event. Having such a diverse group of youth in attendance was a direct result of both peer to peer outreach and, in particular, our newly formed partnerships with other local environmentally focused youth programs including those already mentioned above as well as Seward Park Audubon Center and YMCA Earth Service Corps. Over the past year, we have seen Seattle Youth CAN expand from the original participants, teens already involved in programs at the zoo, aquarium, and science center, to a much broader group of youth leaders who were not already connected to one of these three institutions. This growth is exciting and through our ongoing refinement of the network we believe that the number of youth leaders participating will continue to increase in years to come. Another indicator of success for the summit and other events is that teens are having a good time and building community. Read, for example, Katherine’s recent blog post on how Seattle Youth CAN is creating a positive and fun space for teens to take climate action. An “Action Fair" was a new addition to summit this year worth mentioning, which crated a dynamic forum for youth participants and climate focused community groups to dialogue though activities at an outdoor tabling event. Participating groups included University of Washington, Earth Games, Carbon Washington, Sierra Club, Solar Washington, Plant for the Planet, Our Children’s Trust, and 350.org Seattle. For many of these groups it was the first opportunity to interact with teens from Seattle Youth CAN and we have already begun exploring how we can work more closely with some of them in 2017. Check out the full schedule for more details on workshops, presenters, and participating community groups. Our advice to others?  Zoos and aquariums can play a critical role in developing networks of youth conservation leaders, and in this electronic age don’t underestimate the power of in-person gatherings Measuring our Impact We hoped that teens who participated in Seattle Youth CAN this past year would not only (1) Increase their understanding of the issue, but (2)  increase participation in actions to fight climate change, and (3) that youth leaders would develop measurable leadership skills. Although our audience research team is still hard at work evaluating results from our 2016 programs, we have seen positive trends from an initial review of pre and post survey results and participant interviews to feel confident that Seattle Youth CAN is having a positive impact in these three areas. Stay tuned for a follow up report in late 2016. Making the mountain Group with mountain                   Next Steps In 2017, we are planning to form a Community Advisory Committee to ensure that we have broad support and diverse input from all of the community collaborators with whom we’ve connected over the past two years.  To help with youth leadership, we are planning to add a paid youth climate fellowship opportunity, to build on the youth driven spirit of the project. Also, in an effort to help reach all youth in our region, we plan to conduct focus groups this winter with teens throughout the metropolitan area. We are grateful for the past two years of funding from The Ocean Project’s Innovative Solutions Grants+ program, as it has allowed us to pilot this new model for local youth climate networks.  We have truly valued the ongoing support and coaching from The Ocean Project’s staff and have also appreciated connecting with other recipients of the ISG+ program. We are committed to the future evolution of this work and are excited to continue to share what we’ve learned with other institutions and communities across the countries who are interested in launching their own network or youth climate action project. If you would like to explore the idea of starting a youth climate action network in your region or are already working on a youth climate project and want to connect, please get in touch! Seattleyouthcan@zoo.org

Continue reading

Thank you, President Obama, for Designating the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument!

On behalf of its network of 2,000 aquariums, zoos, museums, youth groups, and conservation organizations across all 50 states and 100 countries, The Ocean Project thanks President Obama for designating the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, and creating a lasting legacy for current and future generations of Americans. During this 100th anniversary year of the National Park Service, we thank President Obama particularly for his leadership in protecting more of our nation’s ocean than any administration in history. Using science-based decision-making, and with the input from across the country – including aquariums and zoos along with an unprecedented involvement of our youth – President Obama has become a true world leader for marine conservation, especially by creating and expanding “blue parks” that will enrich all of our lives. During his time at the helm, the President has comprehensively addressed fisheries issues, opened a new public process for establishing marine sanctuaries, established the National Ocean Policy, and promoted ocean stewardship. Notably, this designation comes following the August expansion by the President of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM) in Hawaii. Credit: NOAA Oceans Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast US Canyons Expedition Science Team President Obama has added a significant victory for the health of our ocean and our planet by designating the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The first such monument designated in the Atlantic Ocean, this spectacular area contains extinct underwater volcanoes, or seamounts, that rise higher than every other mountain east of the Rockies, and canyons that are deeper than the Grand Canyon. Nearly 200 miles off the coast of Cape Cod and Rhode Island, these seamounts and canyons are teeming with ocean life, from deep-diving sperm whales and beaked whales, to dolphins, sea turtles, and also many seabirds, such as the Atlantic puffin. This most recent designation also protects the most abundant and diverse communities of deep sea corals known to exist on the Atlantic seaboard, some hundreds if not thousands of years old. Sperm whales traveling in a unit. Credit: Kelsey Stone, New England Aquarium This designation of the first marine national monument in the Atlantic adds to President Obama’s legacy of having protected more land and water than any other president, and is an action strongly supported by recent surveys. According to recent surveys conducted at a number of aquariums across the country – as part of a special partnership with SEA LIFE Trust and the 8 SEA LIFE Aquariums in North America, 97% of visitors were in favor of expanding our nation’s network of marine protected areas. Protecting our blue backyard is important to people, no matter where they live. With the growing impact of climate change and ocean acidification threatening our ocean’s – and our planet’s health – setting aside special areas in the ocean will provide some resiliency to these increasing stresses. As ocean temperatures rise and acidity threatens marine life, providing sanctuary through habitat protection from other threats helps to preserve genetic diversity, which will be vital for the ocean's inhabitants to be able to withstand more acidic and warmer conditions in the future. This designation is also supported by a growing coalition of young leaders, who have come together in Sea Youth Rise Up, a collaborative campaign between The Ocean Project, the World Oceans Day network, Big Blue & You and the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit. The effort recently brought together seven young ocean conservationists from across the United States, as well as Canada and the Bahamas, to meet with leaders in New York and Washington D.C. and share their message of the importance of protecting our ocean. Credit: NOAA Oceans Explorer Program

Continue reading

ISG+ Final Report: Say #byetobags with the Saint Louis Zoo!

This guest post is submitted by Kirinne Slaughter at the Saint Louis Zoo, and is the last in a 3-part series on their Innovative Solutions Grants+ project. It is hard to believe that it has been almost a year since we began our partnership with The Ocean Project under the Innovative Solutions Grants+ Program. It has been an exciting and rewarding year for everyone involved in the project, especially our Zoo ALIVE teen volunteers as they have developed and implemented the #byetobags campaign. (See previous post). This campaign, based on the successes of the Better Bag Challenge, aimed to get Zoo visitors to make the change to reusable bags. For our innovative twist, we used social media in an attempt to amplify the effects of our on-grounds campaign. KEY FINDINGS As our data collection comes to a close with the end of our summer event season, we have concluded that social media can be an invaluable tool to increasing the effectiveness of an on-grounds campaign. Specifically, our results can be summarized into three key findings: Our on-grounds campaign confirmed the success of the public engagement model from the Better Bag Challenge. Since our first official event on April 23rd, 90% of guests that were asked during their visit to take the pledge did so, and most did so with enthusiasm! The teens approached guests who came near their activity table, connected the problem of plastics in our ocean to its impact on the animals using their own messaging (as I’ll explain later), and then asked guests to pledge to avoid disposable plastic bags in exchange for a reusable bag. And, again, a remarkable 90% of those who were asked filled out a pledge form and “signed” it by providing us with their email address.  One guest even hugged each teen, thanking them for the work they were doing. As of the end of August, 1,373 visitors pledged to switch from plastic bags to reusable bags, and 1,669 #byetobags reusable bags have been given away! To “gut check” our impact, we also tracked the taking of small and medium plastic bags in our gift shops, where bags are available upon request, and found that use was down 9% since the beginning of the year, while the sale of reusable bags had increased by 65%!  While our project can’t claim credit for all of this impact, it certainly was reassuring to see the trend moving in the right direction. Teens working Shark Week We also tried to generate pledges, and found a consistent (but comparatively low) return on investment. As a part of our project, we wanted to know if we could get people to take our pledge through social media, with no interaction on grounds and no bag in return. We embedded links to the pledge page into #byetobags social media accounts and posts we created on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram, as well as onto the Saint Louis Zoo website. While the social media platforms garnered a consistent number of pledges each week, we found that when comparing the number of pledges generated with the number of hours invested, our teens were much more effective - by our estimates more than twice as effective - in their on-grounds engagements. But, we concluded that our social media effort was still important, especially when thinking in broader terms of increasing our project’s overall reach. Of the platforms that we did use, the #byetobags Facebook page was our most successful in this regard - in spite of the teens’ initial doubts!  - growing to nearly 300 likes and a reach of over 25,000 - it proved to be a great platform to engage with individuals, including but not limited to those who completed the pledge form.  Meanwhile, Twitter was our second most successful platform, used primarily for interacting with other plastic pollution organizations, and making professional connections such as St. Louis City Recycling and Earth Share.  So having a variety of social media accounts was useful for us, as each platform can be utilized in different ways including and beyond generating pledges. We learned that those who took the pledge were willing to share their commitment with friends and family, but did not utilize the mechanisms that we created and provided to them. We created a platform with our email service provider through which we emailed every person who took the pledge, giving them the option to then share the pledge out to their friends and family by using one of our preset share buttons that would link them either to Facebook, Twitter, or their email. While we were anticipating a snowball effect, we found that this method did not see the success in which we had hoped. Only a handful of visitors - less than 5 of the nearly 1,600 pledge takers - used the social sharing options we provided to them via email, with 42 total unique social shares. Surprisingly, though, some visitors were very willing to share the pledge utilizing a different method, one that we originally did not anticipate – they copied and pasted the link to our pledge page into their own posts and used #byetobags. Our teens found more than 10 examples where visitors did this, with one person even sharing out the pledge in a Google link format she created, generating another 8 pledges. It seems our guests are willing to share the message, but we need to rethink how we help them to do it! Who takes the #byetobags pledge? As a part of our pledge form, we gave guests the option to select their age group from a drop down menu, and to answer the question, “How often do you use reusable bags?” These questions give us some insight into who is most often taking our pledge on-grounds versus who is most often taking our pledge online.  As shown in the charts, we found that on grounds the most common age group of pledge takers were 31-45 year olds, while online it was 12-18 years olds. This suggests that social media accounts can help us reach a distinct group of pledge takers, notably the youth that research tells us are so important to our missions, and who may be more likely to pledge to conservation action via the internet. Additionally, of the 1,521 total pledge takers who choose to answer the question, “How often do you use reusable bags?” 57% stated that they either “often” or “always” use reusable bags, which was notably higher than the 40% of the public reported by the grocery industry as the national average (Source: http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/u-s-grocery-shopper-trends/grocerytrends2014)  So our pledge may have been more of a reinforcement and reminder to those who already use reusable bags, with encouragement to share with others.  It will be an interesting challenge as we move forward to see how we can do better, on our own and with our guests, at reaching those who rarely or never use reusable bags. Our goal of course being that one-day, everyone will select, “always.”  #byetobags continues at the Saint Louis Zoo program Thanks to funding from a Saint Louis Zoo family donor, the #byetobags campaign will be able to continue at the Saint Louis Zoo for another year! As mentioned in the previous blog post, this campaign is the first of its kind at the Saint Louis Zoo, and the opportunity to continue will allow for further fine tuning, paving the road for the Zoo to have many more in the future. We have a number of very targeted goals for the upcoming year, including: Implementing a bag policy in the gift shops that is more in line with our #byetobags messaging. We had some initial success as noted above, and will continue working with our retail team, as well as the Business and Strategic Operations Departments at the Zoo to come up with a bag policy that works for all. We are also looking forward to pushing our message further outside the Zoo into the St. Louis community. To launch this, the #byetobags campaign is going to be the feature article in our quarterly stlzoo magazine that goes out to all 50,215 of our membership households. Additionally, our Zoo ALIVE teen volunteers are anxious to continue to spread the message to their high schools and our Young Zoo Friends board, a group of young professionals who are Zoo members, are extremely interested in the campaign and are eager to take the message back to their home companies and organizations. Finally, the Saint Louis Zoo is excited to be hosting a Youth Ocean Conservation Summit on our campus on February 11, 2017. Youth Ocean Conservation Summit is a youth-oriented conference whose goal is to educate about how to turn a conservation idea into an action project. The event will feature notable speakers and workshops that will teach young people the skills they need to start a conservation project. We are excited to be hosting the first summit in the Midwest, and are eager to feature #byetobags as an example of a youth run campaign. We are eager to see where the second year of the #byetobags campaign takes us. All departments at the Zoo have been supportive of the project and the possibilities for expansion are truly endless! Teens with Dr. Jeffrey Bonner Advice to others As we reflect back on the creation of our campaign, it is an honor for us to be able to offer advice to other institutions hoping to create similar campaigns. Guests are excited to be asked to partake in a conservation action campaign. Our results confirmed The Ocean Project’s finding that they do indeed expect, trust, and appreciate the advice that you have to offer them on how they could become part of the plastic pollution solution. Not only were our guests willing to sign a pledge, but some were willing to share that pledge with friends and family, and stay invested in a conservation action campaign on social media – we just need to give them more flexibility to share more easily and on their own terms. Use multiple social media platforms, manage each separately, and play to their strengths. Managing each separately, as opposed to making one post for all, allows you to truly tailor the post to each platform’s strengths. Allow for teens to be creative and experimental in messaging. One of the most exciting and successful parts of our campaigns was allowing the teens to experiment with the delivery of the #byetobags message. The emphasis was on connecting the requested action to its importance for the animals, but the teens also were given the ability to deliver the #byetobags message in the way that was most comfortable for them, they were more excited, and more eager to get pledges. Finally, one thing that worked out well for us was that for this project we hired a part-time campaign coordinator, funded by the ISG+ grant. Having someone completely devoted to the #byetobags campaign made communication, facilitation and advocacy about the campaign seamless, and gave the Zoo ALIVE Teen’s a great resource for the project. It also allowed for the message to spread further and faster as the campaign was not limited by staff attention or availability. Overall, this year has been amazingly rewarding. As one Zoo ALIVE teen volunteer, Kiara Hardmon states, “I am really proud to have made an impact for the environment at such a young age.” As the project continues, we are eager to allow more Zoo ALIVE teens the opportunity to work on a project that allows them to feel proud of themselves, while positively influencing the environment around them! #byetobags spreading to Africa

Continue reading

Rising Up for the Ocean

    Growing up on the coast of Florida, I had the chance to connect to unique marine environments and their inhabitants at an early age. Experiences with my family exploring Florida’s water resources, and learning more about these habitats through summer camps and education programs prompted my first interest in the wonder of the ocean. As I got older, my interest in marine science grew into an interest in ocean conservation – working with my friends and family to take action to protect the priceless marine resources of my home state. Through these early experiences I learned the importance of the ocean, how it connects people from all backgrounds on a global scale, and how it plays a key role in the existence of life on earth. At a young age I also learned the ocean is in trouble. From plastic pollution and climate change, to overfishing and habitat destruction, this priceless natural resource is threatened by the actions we take on a daily basis. Now through my work directing the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit, and work with aquariums and conservation organizations on a global scale, I’ve seen the urgent need for action to address these challenges now. I’ve also seen the importance of engaging young people as leaders in the ocean conservation field, building on their passion, new ideas, and energy to build a movement to protect our blue planet. The Sea Youth Rise Up campaign, launched in the spring of 2016 as a collaborative effort between The Ocean Project, World Oceans Day network, the Big Blue & You and the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit, is designed as a platform for young people to rise up for our ocean, share the important work of young conservation leaders, and inspire a global audience of young people to understand the important leadership role they play in protecting the ocean. Utilizing World Oceans Day as a rallying point, the campaign brought together seven young ocean conservationists from the United States, Canada, and the Bahamas: Ben May, Laura Johnson, Dazja Dorsey, Baylee Ritter, Simeon Bethel, Lindsy Myers, and Gabriella Schauber, for three days in New York City and Washington D.C. – allowing these incredible students to share their message of the importance of protecting our ocean with world leaders and their peers. Selected through a global video contest, as well as nominations from our Sea Youth Rise Up partner organizations, our 2016 Sea Youth Rise Up delegates arrived in New York City on June 7, 2016 and prepared for an exciting lineup of events and activities to celebrate World Oceans Day 2016. During our time in New York, Sea Youth Rise Up co-creator, Danni Washington and I joined our delegates for a Live World Oceans Day Google Hangout on Air, hosted from the New York Aquarium, where delegates had the opportunity to share their ocean conservation work and interests, the importance of youth leadership in the field of ocean conservation, and advice for other young people interested in ocean conservation who watched the broadcast from around the world in the United States, New Zealand, India, Curacao, Pakistan, Germany, Somalia, Greece, the Bahamas and Canada. A #SeaYouthRiseUp social media and Thunderclap campaign further highlighted the importance of youth leadership in ocean conservation to a global audience. Delegates also had the exciting opportunity to meet with ocean conservationist and singer/songwriter Jack Johnson, and attend the United Nations World Oceans Day reception. After a whirlwind tour through New York City, our Sea Youth Rise Up team headed out early on June 9 for our nation’s Capital where they participated in a White House Roundtable with members of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Through this unique experience, delegates had a chance to share their support for the creation of additional marine protected areas, and discuss the administration’s ocean conservation priorities. Our D.C. adventures continued with a stop at the Newseum for Capitol Hill Oceans Week, where our team members took part in a live broadcast with the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, and visits with staff members from Youth Service America and EarthEcho International during a wrap up picnic on national mall. We are incredibly proud and inspired by the young people who stepped up and raised their voices for the protection of our ocean through this special event. We’re also excited to continue to share their stories through the upcoming Sea Youth Rise Up short film, tracing their ocean conservation journeys and Sea Youth Rise Up experience, further calling on a global movement of young people to rise up and take on the challenges facing our planet’s marine ecosystems. A special thanks to the partners and sponsors who made this program possible – The Ocean Project, World Oceans Day network, Big Blue & You, Youth Ocean Conservation Summit, NOAA, the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, the Coastal Ecosystem Learning Center network, jetBlue, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium, Youth Service America, and EarthEcho International. We are incredibly grateful for your support and belief in the power of young people to positively impact our planet. If you’d like to learn more about Sea Youth Rise Up, and the inspiring work of our 2016 delegates, be sure to check out www.seayouthriseup.com or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.   Sean Russell is the co-creator of Sea Youth Rise Up. He is the founder and director of the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit, and works with SeaWorld, Mote Marine Laboratory, and conservation organizations on a global scale on youth leadership initiatives. You can follow him on twitter at @seandrussell.

Continue reading

ISG+ Update: Tasting Sustainability at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

This guest post is submitted by Debbie Colodner, Director of Conservation Education and Science from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and is the second in a 3-part series on their Innovative Solutions Grants+ project where they are partnered with Leading for Good to see if they can move the needle on sustainable seafood in Tucson, Arizona. As described previously, the Tasting Sustainability Project partners the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum with the Leading for Good Internship Program in Tucson, Arizona to test strategies for engaging local restaurants on sustainable seafood issues, and encouraging changes in their sourcing. As a secondary goal, the Museum is testing strategies for engaging young adults (millennials) in its mission and programs. We are happy to report progress on both fronts. Identifying restaurants and understanding their interests Based on their interviews, the team divided restaurants into four types (upscale, tavern, family/cultural and hip/urban), finding that at least in this small sample the upscale and hip/urban tended to be more interested in the issue.  They then developed and presented customized strategies for raising awareness and engaging customers, specifically young adult customers.  The four strategies included in-restaurant signage (table tents, posters, menus), social media campaigns, training for wait staff, and co-hosting partner events with the Desert Museum.  The team prototyped each of the strategies with “mini experiments” at four of the restaurants, learning lessons on the first three before deciding to go forward with the fourth. Signage - The feedback on the table tents/signage was that restaurant owners didn’t feel like it was their role to “educate” their customers on this issue, but rather respond to customer questions. Social media campaign – The group proposed having customers post pictures of themselves and their sustainable dishes and tagging the restaurant, but that was thought to take too much time to explain and compile into useful advertising for the restaurant. Training – The group also tried offering training for wait staff during a staff meeting, but time was very limited. The restaurant where this was prototyped, as well as one other continue to be interested in this as part of an ongoing partnership with ASDM, however. Events – The feedback was much more positive on the possibility of co-hosting events at restaurants and/or at the Museum, so the group determined that this would be the strategy they would like to test further, including social media and marketing for the events. Restaurants value the potential for increased exposure from this strategy. Next we will be testing two restaurant events and featuring sustainable seafood at World Ocean Night at the Museum (We’re compiling those results now!) Some promising results so far on our primary goal of engaging local restaurants on sustainable seafood issues:  8 of the 13 already have said they are interested in going forward and partnering in the Museum’s sustainable seafood efforts! One is already a Seafood Watch partner and 6 are interested in learning more about this possibility. Another has already explored this, but their parent company is not ready to pursue it. (The Museum is also exploring the interns’ recommendations to develop a local seafood sustainability partnership program that might be a steppingstone to a full partnership with Monterey Bay.) Two new restaurants have been recruited to offer sustainable seafood tastings at World Oceans Night, and will join two that have participated before. With respect to our secondary goal of young-adult engagement with the Museum, this project has been extremely successful with the interns themselves. The college interns showed positive change in measures of self-efficacy, became confident and competent educators around sustainable seafood issues, developed a much greater affinity for the Desert Museum, and were much more likely to recommend the Museum to their friends. What we’ve learned from this program also has helped us recruit many more “millennials” to our interpretive volunteer corps as well, with 30 of the 46 new stingray interpreters coming from this younger demographic. Our next steps: We will try to answer the following questions related to co-hosted Sustainable Seafood events: Do they increase the likelihood of action on sustainable seafood issues? Do they drive more customers to restaurants that serve sustainable seafood? Do they increase the Museum’s engagement with younger audiences?     More soon!  In the meantime, have a look at our power point presentation on our project: [pdf-embedder url="https://theoceanproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ASDM-Tasting-Sustainability-Final-Presentation-May-2016-1.pdf"]  

Continue reading

ISG+ Update: Zoo-Alive teen volunteers at the Saint Louis Zoo take the #byetobags pledge and spread the word!

This guest post is submitted by Kirinne Slaughter at the Saint Louis Zoo, and is the second in a 3-part series on their Innovative Solutions Grants+ project. Since our last post, our Zoo ALIVE (ZA) teen volunteers have been hard at work helping Zoo visitors say #byetobags! Successfully building on the lessons learned from the Better Bag Challenge, our teens have developed a campaign that asks visitors to be a part of the plastic pollution solution by switching to reusable bags to help sea lions. The teens designed a reusable bag giveaway, and a pledge that states: “I pledge to switch to reusable bags in order to keep our oceans clean for sea lions & all ocean animals!” Since our official launch on April 23rd, they have asked more than 1200 people to take this pledge. As the main question under our grant, we wanted to know how effective social media was at amplifying an on-grounds conservation ask and, at the same time, how effective it could be as a standalone medium of asking people to take conservation action. Specifically, our teens wanted to know: Could they get visitors who took our pledge on-grounds to become active on #byetobags social media, and share the #byetobags pledge with friends and family? How many people could they get to take the #byetobags pledge just through discovery on social media, without the on-grounds bag offer? If people do share the pledge with their friends and family, which method of sharing do they use most? How can we measure all this? These were a lot of questions, and it took a lot of hard work to figure out a way to track the data that we needed to answer these questions. But, with the help of the Zoo’s marketing department and advertising agency, we developed an innovative online pledge taking platform that not only adds a level of sophistication to our campaign, but is the first online campaign of its kind at the Saint Louis Zoo. To properly track data in order to answer these questions, two separate pledge pages were created: one for visitors to sign if they visit a #byetobags table on-grounds, and another for people who accessed the effort through our social media streams or through the Saint Louis Zoo website. The forms are identical in almost every way, save for the fact that the on-grounds form is a ghost page, accessible only to #byetobags staff when on-grounds. Both forms require visitors to give their name, email and zip code. It also gives them the option to give their age, and answer the question, “how often do you use reusable bags?” Have you taken the #byetobags pledge? Do so now, and then help spread the word! The online pledge form can be found here. After taking the pledge, everyone, no matter which pledge form they use, receives an email thanking them for taking the pledge, and asking them to spread the word to their friends and family. The teens came up with three share options to choose from: Facebook, Twitter, and email. No matter which method they choose, an automatic message is provided for them to spread the #byetobags message. For example, if you were to choose to share via Twitter, the following message will be automatically tweeted from your account: “Keep sea lions safe from plastic bags in the ocean! Join us and take the pledge!"  The tweet contains a link back to the #byetobags online pledge page. Because these separate pledge pages generate two separate lists of people, we are able to track whether someone took the pledge on grounds, whether they found the pledge on our social media or on the Saint Louis Zoo website. Additionally, through analysis software provided through Google, Formstack and our email service provider, Sharpspring, we are able to track through which social media channel people access the pledge, and what share option people use most often when spreading the message to their friends and family. As we continue to collect data, there seems to be no limit to the number of questions we can answer with this sophisticated software. What have we found out so far? So far, since our launch on April 23rd, the Zoo ALIVE Teen volunteers have collected data that begins to shed light on their research questions: On grounds: A total of 732 on-grounds pledges have been taken! Meaning this many more reusable bags are being put to use! Additionally, across all events at which the teen volunteers were presenting #byetobags information, 90% of the people that the teens interacted with and asked to take the pledge, did so. While relatively few of these people have shared the pledge from the email that they received, our Facebook following and reach has been increasing steadily each week, with a total Facebook reach of 17,081 people! Online: We also have seen success on our online pledge, with an additional 168 pledges received with no on-grounds interactions at all, due only to presence on social media and the Saint Louis Zoo website. Since the first posting of the online pledge link on #byetobags social media on April 26th, we have averaged around three online pledges taken per day. These pledges come mostly from people responding to our posts on social media, however we do get pledge takers who stumble upon the pledge while simply navigating the Saint Louis Zoo’s website. Which share option has proved most successful so far? Facebook has been used three times as often as other share options for spreading the word about the #byetobags pledge. Anecdotally, however, our Twitter account has garnered lots of attention from other sustainability organizations, such as St. Louis County Recycling and Coast Plastics. I anticipate that our visibility and networking with these organizations will help us greatly as we continue to spread our message into the St. Louis community at large. As we continue to move forward with this campaign… Our teens are focusing on modifying our messaging to emphasize the importance of sharing the pledge with friends and family. Additionally, they will be increasing their engagement on social media in an effort to increase the number of pledges taken online, and the number of followers on our sites. Just this past week, we unveiled a #byetobags challenge that asks followers to post a photo/video with their reusable bag. With this challenge we hope to increase awareness and engagement with our campaign. As we continue to interact with visitors throughout the summer, we expect to see these numbers increase, with more and more people joining the pledge through social media, and spreading the word! The whole Zoo says #byetobags!   In addition to the primary aspect of our grant, we have also been involved in many other important parts of Zoo culture. Our gift shops have been very involved with the project. They have incorporated signs into their shops encouraging people to choose reusable bags, and ask visitors, “Do you need a bag today?” upon checkout. Additionally, our #byetobags messaging has been integrated into our Sea Lion Show. Before each show, an audio clip recorded by the Zoo ALIVE teen volunteers plays that gives an overview of the #byetobags project. During the show, the trainers explain how important reusable bags are, and give away a #byetobags reusable bag. The sea lions themselves also take part and during the show they put their “lunch” into a prop #byetobags reusable bag. https://theoceanproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/OPR-Audio-Clip-2-Final-1.mp3   Finally, we are an integral activity at our weekly summer concert series, Jungle Boogie. We have formed strong connections with visitors who attend this event each week, and they have become advocates for our project as they encourage new visitors to stop by our table. An overwhelming majority of our guests have been nothing but positive when interacting with our #byetobags table. They seem grateful for the information, and excited about receiving our help in starting to work towards more sustainable behaviors. Our next steps include continuing to work with the various departments around the Zoo and the Saint Louis community to increase the spread of our message. We will be at an increasing number of events throughout the summer, and new ZA’s have been trained and will begin working with the #byetobags campaign. Additionally, as we continue to analyze different parts of our data, we will continue to answer our research questions as to how we can most successfully amplify an on-grounds ask using social media.

Continue reading

Happy World Oceans Day!

  Feliz Día Mundial de los Océanos!   ハッピー世界海洋デー   سعيد اليوم العالمي للمحيطات Vrolijk Wereld Oceanen Dag! Bonne Journée Mondiale de l’Océan!     ਧੰਨ ਵਿਸ਼ਵ ਸਮੁੰਦਰ ਦਿਵਸ!       世界海洋日快樂 Feliz Dia Mundial dos Oceanos! Fröhlichen Tag des Meeres!     हैप्पी विश्व महासागर दिवस के अवसर!         Счастливый Всемирный день океанов! Chúc mừng Ngày Đại dương Thế giới শুভ বিশ্ব মহাসাগর দিবস!   행복한 세계 해양의 날  Felice Giornata Mondiale degli Oceani!  Felis Dia Mundial di Océano World Oceans Day is a global day of ocean celebration and collaboration for a better future. From the entire team at World Oceans Day headquarters, we hope you will celebrate your connection to our shared ocean on June 8th, and get involved in helping with solutions to the many challenges we face in creating a healthier ocean and a more sustainable society. No matter where you live – each of us affects the ocean and is affected by the ocean. This year, individuals and organizations across our blue planet are celebrating with the theme “Healthy Oceans, Healthy Planet” and are promoting prevention of plastic ocean pollution with events in their communities, with special announcements and everything in between! You, too, can get involved in a fun and easy way! Participate in the Wave for Change by joining singer Jack Johnson who started The Wave, asking people to make a commitment to the ocean on World Oceans Day, reduce their plastic usage, and spread the message that the oceans need our help. As Jack Johnson says in his video, youth are the key for a better future. We are particularly excited by our long-term commitment to involve youth: this week we announced the creation of a World Oceans Day Youth Advisory Council, which will be instrumental in shaping the development of World Oceans Day into the future, providing new ideas and unique perspectives. Together, with the Youth Advisory Council, our growing global network of partners from all sectors in dozens of countries, and our Supporters, we will grow the reach and impact of World Oceans Day on June 8 and also expand opportunities for ocean conservation throughout the year. With the enthusiasm and involvement of people around the world, World Oceans Day has grown tremendously each year since The Ocean Project started promoting and coordinating it in 2002. With hundreds of partner organizations and networks involved, and especially since the United Nations officially recognized June 8 as World Oceans Day in late 2008, we have collectively reached millions worldwide. This global celebration is growing fast and provides a special day once a year to reflect on the importance of a healthy ocean, our ocean connections, and how each of us can make a positive difference in our lifetimes. We hope you will become more involved!  

Continue reading

ISG+ New Project: Zoo ALIVE Teen Volunteers at the Saint Louis Zoo say #ByetoBags … and ask that you do too!

This guest post is submitted by Kirinne Slaughter at the Saint Louis Zoo, and is the first in a 3-part series on their Innovative Solutions Grants+ project. Building on the Better Bag Challenge Zoo ALIVE teen volunteer For more than a decade, the Zoo ALIVE (Active Leaders In Volunteer Education) Teen Volunteers at the Saint Louis Zoo have been educating zoo visitors, zoo campers and the St. Louis community about animals, their habitats and conservation. Now, for the first time, thanks to the support from The Ocean Project’s Innovative Solutions Grant+, these teen volunteers will aim not only to inform, but also to inspire others-onsite and online-to take action on one of the biggest issues facing the environment today: plastic pollution, particularly from single-use plastic bags. To begin, the teens looked to the results of the “Better Bag Challenge.” This challenge was inspiration for what our teens wanted to create, and what was learned provided a strong base for our campaign. The main lessons from the Better Bag Challenge that our teens will apply going forward are: Use a Simple Message: Choose reusable bags to avoid single-use plastic bags. Be Solution-Oriented: Position visitors as part of the solution. In order to instill in our guests the confidence that they can make a difference, the campaign will be framed so that guests feel they can make a difference and be part of the plastic pollution solution. Make a Direct Connection to Sea Life: The most effective messaging connected the action directly to the benefits for an animal. While others referenced sea turtles, our inland zoo is home to California Sea Lions and Harbor Seals, which we think will serve as the perfect ambassadors. Walk the Talk: Another approach to effective messaging connected the action to what the zoo itself is doing, so our campaign will aim to reduce the use of plastic bags in our gift shops. Teen volunteers will be open about this effort, and share its progress with zoo guests. Ask for a Pledge: Our on-grounds visitors also will be given a reusable bag upon completion of a pledge, but instead of asking visitors also to take a follow up survey, which can have relatively low response rates, we thought we’d try a twist! Going Online with #ByetoBags #ByetoBags Our twist? The teens plan to test if they can use social media to amplify the effects of the “Better Bag Challenge.” The teens will measure the extent to which people share their commitment through social media, as well as how many others join in making the pledge back on our own web site. The teens will do so in two main ways: On-Grounds Amplification: How successfully can we amplify the reach and impact of our on-grounds pledge participants using social media? After taking our pledge to use reusable bags, and receiving a reusable bag, zoo visitors will receive an email asking them to use #byetobags on selected social media channels as a way to share the message with their friends and family, encouraging them to join in and take the pledge too. This idea is in keeping with what has been found in research by The Ocean Project: not only do most people want to be green, but they also want to be seen as “green.” We then will measure success by monitoring how the use of #byetobags spreads and how many people sign up at our online pledge page. As an additional measure to our on-grounds tactic, we will be monitoring plastic bag use at our Saint Louis Zoo gift shops, expecting it to go down! Direct Social Media Push: The teens also were wondering if they could skip the on-grounds offer of a bag and still have success by going directly to social media. By having a pledge page that is online and promoted through social media sites, and that once again asks people to use reusable bags and to share their commitment with friends and family by posting with #byetobags, we plan to assess how many people they reach and how many of those signed the pledge. Our teens are eager to launch their campaign and take it to social media. The key next step for the teens will be deciding on the specific social media tools and tactics that they want to test (e.g. share #byetobags post on Facebook vs. share #byetobags video on Instagram) and then talking with the zoo marketing team about how those efforts can best be tracked. Our teens are already planning to share the methods and success of this campaign in presentations at their area high schools. And, we’re just getting started! Keep a look out for our update!

Continue reading

ISG+ Final Report: Survey Says… ZooTeens at Riverbanks Zoo and Garden spur visitors to action!

This guest post by Director of Education, Elizabeth Clemens, and Coordinator of ZooTeens and Scout Programs, Syndi Castelluccio, of Riverbanks Zoo and Garden is their final in a 3-part series on their Innovative Solutions Grants+ project, which investigates how engaging with teens and receiving incentives can impact zoo guest behavior. Sailing Along... The Riverbanks Zoo and Garden’s ZooTeen volunteers have been busy over the last year taking direct action and engaging our visitors in efforts to keep trash out of our ocean. You’ve been waiting for the results, and the results are in. Survey Says… We began our journey under our Innovative Solutions Grant just over a year ago wanting to accomplish two main things: Try a different approach to engaging our ZooTeens, one that emphasizes learning by doing Get our teens to take the lead in an “ask task,” encouraging others to join them in taking action As we reported in our last post, the teens responded really well to our new approach to engaging them, and they were eager to lead an experiment in how to engage others. Working with the teens, we decided to compare and contrast the experiences of two sets of individuals, and see which group would be more willing to join us in taking action. A “Control Group,” which we also called our “outside the zoo experience group” as they interacted with our teens at a location other than the zoo, where they were asked to take a reusable bag, use it, and complete a survey. The engagement time for this group averaged about one minute, and was spent almost entirely on the solution step of using the bag. An “Experimental Group” of zoo guests who while onsite engaged much more deeply on the issue with the ZooTeens, learning about the problem of marine debris, typically at an “information station,” before receiving the bag and agreeing to use it and take the follow-up survey. Engagement time for this group averaged about 5 minutes, with much more information about the problem and about the same amount of information about the solution. We all, staff and teens alike, predicted that the “Experimental Group” that engaged onsite with the teens for a longer period of time and received more information about the problem would be more likely to take the next step and respond to the survey. We also believed that this same group would be more likely to report in the survey that they were using the bag and taking additional action. The teens made several comments throughout about their experience approaching both groups of individuals. Some teens reported that it was easier to get others to engage with them at the zoo, where they had the benefit of the information stations, props, biofacts, and activities. Yet other teens surprised us by saying that the location didn’t seem to matter. One of our teens, admittedly a real go-getter, reported that no matter the situation she could get individuals to sign up by just asking. So, in sum, the teens told us that with a prop, and especially the bags to give away, it was almost as easy for them to engage others offsite as onsite. A few weeks after distributing the bags, we began circulating the survey. We received a great response, with more than 30% of those we contacted completing the survey. This was significantly higher than the Better Bag Challenge around World Oceans Day 2015, where, in that effort, which was based on our same concept, only 7% of those contacted actually followed up and completed the survey. That now posed a new and unexpected question for us: Was it simply the energy and enthusiasm of teens being the voice of conservation that made participants reply at a higher rate? Things got even more interesting when we began to compare and contrast our control group with our experimental group, as our results didn’t hold true to our original prediction! We found that not only did both groups respond at about the same rate to the survey request, but also in about the same way in terms of their responses to the survey questions. Having the zoo experience and receiving the extra information about the problem didn’t seem to make much of a difference at all when it came to individuals following up and taking action! Taking the results with a proverbial grain of salt, as these were self-selecting samples taking the survey, we found that members of our control and experimental groups expressed: About the same level of concern for the future of the ocean (Control: 76% agreement / Experimental: 78% agreement) About the same sense that zoos and aquariums are a good source for accurate information about the ways to protect and conserve wildlife (Control: 88% agreement / Experimental: 86% agreement) About the same level of support for zoos and aquariums suggesting ways for them to help solve problems facing the ocean and its animals (Control: 88% agreement / Experimental: 91% agreement) About the same level of agreement between the two groups that by joining zoos and aquariums in taking action the public can play an important role in addressing the problems facing our ocean and its animals (Control: 84% agreement / Experimental: 87% agreement) Moreover, both groups reported using their bags at almost the same exact rate on our five point scale! (Control: 3.2 / Experimental: 3.4) We also received comments from both groups that were very positive in tone, and also hit on many of the same themes: “I’ve been visiting the zoo for 32+ years. I am thankful to see the zoo taking a more active role in reusable items.” "Thoroughly enjoyed our visit as well as the information provided about "Plastic Free Me" Campaign." “Thank you for checking with me. I got the bag at Kids Day in Lexington. I use if for many reasons and very often. It’s a great bag.” “I have heard great things about Riverbanks Zoo and Garden. A visit is high on my list of places to go.” “I really appreciate the awareness information given, it has made my family more aware.” Next we looked at our overall results in rough comparison to the national public opinion research by The Ocean Project, and saw some suggestion that our teens engaging people with a solution-oriented action step appeared to increase not just public concern about the ocean, but also -- and even more promising -- our public’s sense that zoos and aquariums are good sources of accurate information about ways to conserve the ocean, and their feeling that by joining zoos and aquariums in taking action, they can play an important role in addressing the problems facing the ocean. Not enough to say for sure, but certainly indications are that by asking people to join us as part of the solution we are heading in the right direction! We have learned a lot from our efforts under this grant, and in conclusion I would highlight the following “lessons learned” for our colleagues in the zoo and aquarium community: Create a teen program that is a fully immersive “learning by doing” experience as that can inspire participants to take that experience beyond the zoo and become true “Stewards of Our Seas” Having inspired teens makes for a more engaging and meaningful experience and their enthusiasm may just rub off on your guests Keep messaging to the point, as sometimes our guests and others don’t need all the details - they want to do what’s best and we just need to encourage and ask. One final note... We cannot express enough the gratitude we have for being given the opportunity to test hypotheses under the Innovative Solutions Grant+ program. This experience has inspired us to keep testing our assumptions when it comes to developing best practices for public engagement at our institution.

Continue reading