Review the 9 steps for planning an outreach activity listed below.

These nine steps are key to planning your outreach or training initiative. Each step is important, but it is not necessary to do them in order. In fact, thinking and making decisions about one step will affect how you approach another one. You may find that as you increase your understanding about what you want to do, you revisit one or more steps several times. The Water Outreach Web site provides further information about each step. Links are on the USE BEPs/Plan: Quick Tips page.

Activity Directions

As you read through the following planning steps, what questions spring to mind about your own work? Referring to these steps, consider what answers you would need in order to define goals and objectives that are likely to lead to a change in behavior.

Make a list of what you need to know that is as detailed as possible. This list will serve as a guide as you fill out your Behavior Change Planning tool in activities described in Units 2 - 7. Look at Planning Step #2, for example. Do you know who your target audience will be? Do you know what issues and activities interest your target audience? If not, this is one type of information you will need to find as you build understanding for how to change behavior related to your environmental situation. 

OUTREACH PLANNING STEPS

1. Identify the type of outreach or education effort that you will emphasize. Accomplish What? helps you plan how to:
• Provide Information
• Communicate
• Educate
• Build Capacity
2. Familiarize yourself with the "community of interest." Link your effort to local issues and activities.
3. Define and assess the target audience(s).
4. Define clear goals and objectives, in cooperation with stakeholders and target audience.
5. Inventory resources and constraints, and adapt your initiative to capitalize on results.
6. Design your initiative with a focus on your goals, audience characteristics, and resources.
• Match to resources and audience characteristics.
• Identify education or outreach knowledge areas relevant to the topic and use best education practices for each.
• Actively engage target audience
7. Pilot test and modify
8. Implement, deliver, or disseminate
9. Evaluate and revise

NEXT

To prepare for Assignment 1.7, download Educating about Behavior and the Environment doc file here. If you would like to start Assignment 1.7 now, click here.