Any volunteers? One Cool Earth, a garden education non-profit in San Luis Obispo, is publicizing volunteer opportunities on their social media pages to encourage the younger generations to volunteer. Hello to high schoolers and college students, you can follow One Cool Earth on Instagram and Facebook to learn and sign up for volunteer opportunities.
How you can help
Are you looking for a way to get involved this quarter? Do you care about garden education? How about teaching agricultural lessons? Look no further, One Cool Earth is
a local non-profit seeking volunteers, students to fill job/internship openings, and donors. If you know of an elementary schooler who would love to learn about the earth, connect them with these
free lessons. With most of the county home-schooling, these lessons are a great at-home way to add a fun educational activity to the school day. One Cool Earth needs the community to back
their mission. It is through the help of others that more garden education can be taught to youth.
For me, this move to online platforms for volunteering was so helpful. I was able to volunteer because I had seen opportunities on Instagram. All I had to do is direct message their Instagram account to sign up for volunteering. No worries if you would rather sign up to volunteer directly on their website, you still can! One Cool Earth is utilizing new media in a variety of ways to get their name and their opportunities out to the public. With their effective use of new media, they are a leading example of how nonprofits can use social media in San Luis Obispo.
How is it working out?
Great, not only is new media helping attract a younger generation of volunteers, but it is enabling lessons to move online. New Media is supporting their mission of making garden education more accessible to young children and families. Anyone can benefit from following their social media pages. I learned that winter is a good time to prune trees from a recent Facebook post. For little tidbits like this, follow their page. I truly believe the work they are doing is creating a generation of youth empowered to change the world.
The lessons they teach and activities they host are creating a dialogue of environmental education they will never forget. It is through hands-on engaging activities that children are able to remember and talk about what they learned. Especially during COVID19 learning where everyday is online and redundant, the day these students get their garden kit and can create a project with the garden educator will be a special day they will remember.
During COVID19, a lot of people have some extra time on their hands and are looking for volunteer opportunities. However, people are not seeing volunteer sign-ups or pamphlets at their school or workplaces. This is why social media posts with volunteer opportunities are more important than ever. For individuals in this class, as future agricultural communicators, we have the ability to use social media platforms to inform, educate, and spread resources. One Cool Earth’s social media usage is a great example of how to do this. Their content is professional, informative, and fun to catch the attention of the public and teach them about agriculture. These platforms are one of the most important ways to spread information for non-profits at this time. One Cool Earth’s use of online videos, Instagram, Facebook, and emailing, is helping grow their organization for the better.
Areas for Improvement
One Cool Earth could utilize tagging local clubs or people. There are many Cal Poly clubs that relate to gardening, education, and agriculture. The community has clubs and organizations like these as well. If One Cool Earth tagged them in posts, these messages could be spread more rapidly and reach a larger audience of San Luis Obispo County members interested in volunteering.
One Cool Earth’s email newsletter could be sent more often with updates and opportunities to keep community engagement successful. The email newsletter is a great way to gain attention from supporters of all ages, especially those who are less tech savvy and may not have social media accounts. This newsletter is only sent out occasionally, so I think One Cool Earth would benefit from making it a bi-weekly or monthly send out.
New projects
The internet is revolutionizing education during COVID19. One cool earth has been able to transform their lessons, that were once done in person, into online content. They have educational videos with garden educators teaching elementary students all about gardening, agriculture, the importance of eating healthy, and protecting the environment. Their variety of lessons are being shared with elementary schools who partner with them. The elementary schoolers get a garden material kit for free so that they can do these hands-on lessons. One cool earth is still maintaining the gardens on these elementary school campuses so that when students can go back to in-person learning, the gardens will be flourishing. One of their most recent projects was creating a new garden space at CL Smith Elementary school, to be used next year.
Past projects
One Cool Earth has established school gardens in fourteen locations across San Luis Obispo County, and they work with eighteen schools total. Their main lesson plans teach students about food, water, and waste through Next Generation Science Standards. Students get to grow and harvest the plants in the garden and bring them home to eat. One Cool Earth put on Family Cooking Night events to teach families how to prepare and cook with healthy ingredients. This program encourages families to learn to cook and eat dinner together at least once a week.
New media, like Instagram and Facebook are helping connect more communities to the One Cool Earth mission and is creating a healthier, more sustainable San Luis Obispo County, one garden at a time.
Evie Schwartz
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