Hello Friends,

In this article I will discuss some of the strategies to spread awareness about the environmental problems we face today. As we discussed in the previous article, awareness about this cause is indeed important to cultivate a next generation of environmentally conscious citizens. However, creating meaningful awareness and truly inspiring someone to care about a cause such as environmentalism can be often times a difficult task. However, I have found some effective ways to spread awareness about a cause, two of which I would like to share in detail with you in this article. They are sort of the high impact to high reach contrast in methods of awareness. However, as you read through be sure that there are effective techniques for any type of awareness in between.

Firstly, the high reach awareness campaigns. So high reach basically refers to an awareness campaign that reaches a large number of people very quickly. The best way in order to accomplish this is the world of the web. The internet is one of the fastest means of communication in the world today in fact it is the mean I am using to communicate with you right now. Whether it be through a website or through social media, the web allows us an opportunity to appeal to a large number of viewers worldwide. Also, it is relatively cheap in contrast to poster and paper campaigns. Thus, it is one of the most effective awareness techniques there is – reach a large number of people with minimal costs perfect for a non-profit cause such as environmentalism. However, there are keys to have a successful web based campaign. I learned this in the process of designing the concept of the ?cloud based mission? for my charity ?United4Literacy?. Our cloud based mission makes use of the cloud, or computer domain in order to reach out to people around the world. However, in designing this campaign, I realized there are some ways to create a truly effective awareness effort on the web.

So here it is:

?span style="font-size: 7pt font-family: 'Times New Roman'">         Create a campaign where the reader can clearly understand the cause behind the awareness. It may seem obvious however many times the cause of the initiative may be ambiguous and if the cause does not immediately interest and engage the viewer then they will lose interest. Tunza in fact does a great job with this: the name eco-generation effectively conveys the premise behind the initiative.

?span style="font-size: 7pt font-family: 'Times New Roman'">         Get the viewer engaged immediately. Tell them in a couple of sentences what the cause is and why it is important. It is very important to tell viewers why the cause of environmentalism is important. In fact whenever I have given a speech or presentation about literacy as part of United4Literacy, I have always started by explaining the problem and why it matters very briefly. Environmental issues affect all citizens of this world and therefore we must all do our part to help with them. This must come forward in the campaign first.

?span style="font-size: 7pt font-family: 'Times New Roman'">         Create an environment where the reader can interact with you, give you there opinion. Online campaigns often times are not engaging because they have no way that you can contact the person behind the initiative. Maybe the reader may have question about the cause. Simply putting information out there is not enough, there must be a channel of information exchange between reader and you in your awareness efforts.

These are sort of broad ideas that can be applied to any type of web based effort – from blog to website to social media. If used properly and safely the online platform is one of the greatest tools to spread information about causes such as the environment all across the world.

Secondly, after there is another thing I noticed in awareness campaigns which I briefly mentioned above is interactive-ness of the campaign or sort of how interactive it is. Often times telling someone of a problem is not the best way of drawing their attention to it. That is where the high impact side of things comes into play. High impact campaigns may not appeal to a large populace however they create a defined and long lasting effect. This can be accomplished by involving the reader in the campaign and allowing them to embark on a journey of ?self-discovery?, ask themselves what the environment means to them. An example of this is the Tunza Poster contests I have help in local schools. These contests involved only a small group of kids at local schools but made a lasting impact. In the process of making their posters centred on the theme of sustainability, the students had to question what sustainability meant to them in order to portray it in their art. This led the students to discover the importance of environmentalism by themselves, a far more powerful process then simply telling them of the problem.

However, these are the two extremes. Between high impact and high reach there are most awareness campaigns that the very successful. If you have any awareness ideas or any questions please let me know.

Thank you,

Kindest Regards,

Nitish