I’m a serial social entrepreneur working on my third big nonprofit project.
I go to elementary schools where I spend a day working with teachers and students to bring them up to speed on climate change with my program: Green Actioneers. That same evening, the students return with their parents for Family Night and together they fill out a Green Action Checklist of all the things they promise to do to reduce their carbon and water footprints. We then organize a “Green Team” at the school to help families take action. The Green Team gets local vendors of “green” products and services to agree to provide rebates to the school for energy-saving and water-saving purchases by families. Kids and parents get to brag to their peers about their progress.
As a boy growing up in the marshes of Cape Cod, I was immersed in the natural world and remember when Rachel Carson’s books – The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea – came out. They made me want to work on the relationship between people and the environment.
In January 2007, I was trained by former Vice President Al Gore and realized immediately that scaring people about climate change is not going to get them to take sufficient action. That is not how we helped change the culture in Korea or Taiwan. I know that massive social change is feasible when people are approached with hope, not fear.
What it takes is a plan to reach families with messages about the positive changes that can take place for themselves and their children, and a list of things to do, along with small rewards for big changes. People will act altruistically if they know that others are watching.
In 39 schools in eight states, hundreds of families have taken steps to become “Good Climate Citizens.” Parents come up to me after family night with tears in their eyes and thank me for getting them to turn off the TV and do something important with their children. They literally are waiting for someone to give them a clear path to a solution of the climate crisis.
In addition to my current project, I worked from 1966-1976 as the information, education and communication consultant to the very effective family planning programs of South Korea and Taiwan that took family size from six kids to 1.6 in a generation. Then from 1976-2006 I visited over 2,000 schools in 41 states with my instructional program Juggling For Success.
Experienced adults provide a deep well of experience and can help design programs that can solve some of the massive problems of the planet. But genuine change will require people to hold meaningful conversations at the neighborhood level. Not every problem can be solved with an app.