Community Engagement & Impact

Poster

P03 - Community Relationships and Conservation Leadership

Permalink: https://www.eventscribe.com/2019/AAMers/fsPopup.asp?mode=presInfo&PresentationID=526110

The Chicago Zoological Society’s Conservation Leadership Academy is a suite of early childhood, youth, teen, and college programs that provide a new education model of community engagement. The academy is founded on a National Science Foundation-funded “Supporting a Community's Informal Education Needs: Confidence and Empowerment in STEM (SCIENCES)” project that partners with Eden Place, a nature center in an underresourced neighborhood. We apply lessons learned from SCIENCES about building community relationships and developing, facilitating, and evaluating informal science education programs with community relevance.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall strategies for sustained community engagement, including partnership development, education programs across ages and audiences, and multiple touch points.
• Describe attributes of a trusted, relevant community partner, including transparency, time, patience, persistence, and a consistent presence.
• Summarize community-focused evaluation tactics such as adaptability to unanticipated situations and outcomes, and hiring local “Community Ambassadors” for data collection.

Poster Presenter(s)

• LK

  Lisa-Anne Kelly

  Senior Manager of Education Strategies and Research
  Chicago Zoological Society

Poster Presenter / Co-Author(s)

• SB

  Sarah Breen Bartecki

  Senior Vice President of Conservation, Education, and Training
  Chicago Zoological Society