Welcome to Earthforce. Our community action and problem-solving process combines the best of action civics, project-based learning, and STEM education. We have a suite of materials that guide you through this process, along with great professional development workshops. Look to our Educators Guide, Tips Cards, and Resources website to help you navigate an Earthforce experience.
Step 1 establishes the foundation of Earthforce by defining community, investigating that community, and determining the root causes of concerns you find. This sets the stage to choose an environmental issue and address it with a civic action project. Our process is designed to meet national standards like NGSS, C3, and the 21st century skills. For more information look online at earthforceresources.org Step one begins by defining your community, which establishes where your project will take place.
There are many aspects of a community and ways to define it. These include geography like a schoolyard or city, and social aspects like membership in community organizations. As the educator, you should define the community in a way that seems manageable. When making this decision, consider what spaces participants can access, what data you already gather, and which curricular ties you'd like to make.
If this is your first dive into youth-driven learning, try using a narrower geographic definition of community, like our schoolyard. There are many ways to conduct an inventory. The key is defining the content topic your group is going to study. As the facilitator, you can determine which inventories work best, or you can work in partnership with youth to decide.
The more inventories you conduct, the more information your group will have to make a well-informed decision in step two. We recommend conducting at least three inventories, one that is numbers-based, one that gathers descriptive information, and one chosen by students. Numbers-based inventories gather data that are numbers.
These include methods like measuring water quality or analyzing maps. Descriptive inventories include other types of information, like talking to experts or conducting surveys. After conducting inventories, analyze your information to see what your community's strengths and concerns are.
Environmental concerns are problems that evolve from people's interaction with nature. Concerns should be local and relevant to the young people. Strengths are the people, organizations, and features of your community that are environmentally positive. These provide a balanced view of your community and may serve as a resource for understanding and addressing issues.
As youth complete their inventories, they should document their information and categorize it into an organized list of strengths and concerns. Remember, students should be identifying concerns, not projects. For example, if students have recycling on their list, this is a project idea, not a concern. Perhaps they are really concerned that trash piles up in their cafeteria or that plastics were found in a river near their school.
Use this list to begin a student work portfolio. It's important to keep student work to reflect on. Learn more by referencing our tips cards or talking with your Earthforce representative.
Once youth have a list of concerns, they need to know if these concerns are root causes, or if they are effects of root causes. Later on in the process, it is important to research and develop project ideas based on root causes to ensure projects are meaningful and sustainable. For instance, if your students are concerned about flooding in their community, the root cause may be that a nearby stream has been narrowed to accommodate a bridge.
To figure out if their concerns are root causes, conduct a root cause analysis. We have developed a series of tools to help these discussions, all of which can be found on the Step 1 Resources page on earthforceresources.org. Remember, it's important to keep the root cause discussion within the defined community.
Sticking to the root causes of the local level will help you create manageable and sustainable projects later on. You will know you have effectively completed Step 1 if… The community has been defined. Students have completed multiple inventories including one descriptive and one numbers-based. The inventories have resulted in a list of strengths and concerns.
That list of concerns has been analyzed and root causes, kept within the community, have been identified. Students have created a portfolio to save their work. Congratulations! You're ready to move on to Step 2, Issue Selection.