Social media campaign “#Gen-Nature” by Youth At the Zoo (Taronga) members, Kieren, Belle, Maddie, Dylan, Ryan, Eleanor (OzGREEN); with mentor Sue Lennox.
KIEREN, BELLE, MADDIE, DYLAN, RYAN & ELANOR (15 years)
The #Gen-Nature Facebook community was established in August 2014, following the Eco-Leadership Camp with OzGREEN and Wooglemai Environmental Education Centre. Regular posts about nature issues are made by the core #Gen-nature crew.
We chose this project because we felt youth had a lack of interest in nature and we wanted to do something about that. We were motivated by our passion for the natural world. We felt empowered to do something because of the Eco-leadership camp and felt we could make a difference.
OBJECTIVES
1. Engage an audience of youth to become interested in nature.
2. Energise other youth to become more eco-active.
3. Make environmental issues more relevant to the younger generation.
ACTIONS
We set up a Facebook page #Gen-nature with scheduled weekly posts on what we thought would be relevant to young people. We sourced most information from the internet news articles:
Greenpeace Australia-Pacific Facebook page
Action.sumofus.org
Change.org
11 alive Facebook page
The plaid zebra.com
Animals Australia Facebook page
We asked questions about what people thought about the issues we posted about.
We suggested action that young people could take e.g. pick up litter.
We promoted our project by inviting our Facebook Friends to like our page.
We promoted the page through other youth networks (e.g. Youth Leading the World).
We spoke about #Gen-nature at the Taronga Zoo Eco-Fair in November 2014.
We handed out small flyers with the Facebook page on it, asking people to check it out.
We collected reactions from the statistics on Facebook. We asked Facebook page users to comment.
CONCLUSIONS
We had a great vision and great ideas. When we all got together, we were able to think of positive ways of engaging youth. We learned that people respond more positively to stories that are direct and simple, local, entertaining and visual and relevant.
Going forward, we would like to tell more personal stories and actions we have taken as young people e.g. our involvement in Youth at the Zoo (YATZ) and caring for animals there and the recent camp to help preserve the Regent Honeyeater at Chilton in Victoria (through Taronga Zoo); as well as focus posts around different nature themes.
