Getting in Step:
A Guide to Effective Outreach in Your Watershed

This workshop is intended for federal, state, and local agency staff; drinking and wastewater utilities; and non-governmental organizations. The workshop covers outreach, education, and public involvement strategies linked to watershed assessment, planning, and management processes.

The key to successful watershed outreach and public education programs is targeting selected messages to specific audiences to achieve the desired response. Shrinking budgets and increasing demands on water resources mean that education/outreach efforts will have to be both efficient and effective.

This workshop offers a step-by-step approach to planning and implementing outreach and education programs to achieve significant results with limited resources. The building blocks for such a process include defining the program objective, identifying the audience, developing the message, selecting a format, identifying distribution venues, and evaluating the results. Each task involves careful attention to process, a creative approach and a willingness to explore new relationships and venues for message dissemination.

The workshop also covers the use of innovative designs, graphics, photos, "hooks," and textual materials to enhance the visibility and impact of water resource protection information. Watershed groups are exploring web sites, subway dioramas, placards, billboards, pointless pencils ("there's no point to non-point pollution") and other high-impact marketing approaches to outreach and education. The workshop will review some of these tools, including cost, and discuss how targeting specific messages to particular audiences can help instill a conservation ethic among various audiences.

The workshop also includes a section on partnering with the news media to enhance outreach and education efforts. Approaches for increasing coverage of watershed issues, restoration projects, and volunteer monitoring programs are examined in detail. Attendees will learn how to frame watershed protection messages for maximum impact by linking water quality to values that are important to the public. A final section on risk communication provides agency public information personnel and watershed group representatives with insights on risk issues, how media interviews are conducted, and offers tools and techniques to employ when dealing with reporters or appearing in televised news programs.

For more information about the Getting in Step Guide or to view the Guide in PDF format, click here.

Topics:

• Outreach process steps
  
• Tips on graphic material selection
  
• Layout and production
  
• Working with the news media