#don't actually know if I can start my november job on monday but I think/hope so we're having another meeting tomorrow

[linguenuvolose]

might work 12 days in a row lmao <3 benone

[daniellapaganoposts-blog]

#34 - Interview with Gold Coast Campaign Coordinator

Monday, November 4th, 2019

Duration: 13:44 min

Interviewer: Okay… alright, so my first question is, what is your role in Positive Change for Marine Life?

Interviewee: So I’m the Gold Coast Coordinator in Positive Change for Marine Life. So I what I do is I organize the local Gold Coast events, we do beach cleanup, educational programs, um, trying to reach out to the community: we’ve done door-knocks, um, things like that, just to raise awareness of plastic pollution, especially on Tallebudgera Creek. So, what we do, um one of our big projects called River Warriors Project, it, uh, it does—we do like several cleans on Tallebudgera Creek and we get the school kids involved as well, so, it’s just a matter of organizing that and talking to schools and public and stuff like that.

Interviewer: Cool. Why did you get involved?

Interviewee:I got involved because, well realistically, I needed more experience on my CV. Whether it was to apply for a PhD or get a job or whatever it may be. So, I applied to Positive Change to get experience but I also am finishing marine conversation and um, like plastic pollution, so that way it was a nice fit to um, just go for Positive Change.

Interviewer: Nice. Going back to like what you mentioned about the education programs and if you wanna include any campaigns, I'm wondering what qualities do you think make a campaign or an education program work?

Interviewee:I think, like the qualities of the person, actually running it, like campaigning can be quite disheartening. And a lot of people don’t want to talk to or they don’t want to kind of listen to what you’re saying, or they think you’re gonna sell something to them, the tenacities to kind of, um push through and get the message across, that’s really important, um, and I guess, with education programs, it’s really reaching the future generation. So, the little kids that are going to be our age or older in the future, hopefully they will kind of stuff up the environment as much as we have, so it’s definitely—‘cause a lot of the schools don't really teach, like plastic pollution, or like marine-related things, so I guess you need to have an external person that comes in and gives little talks and that kind of opens their eyes and hopefully inspires like, little kids to do something better.

Interviewer: Do the schools reach out to you if they want to have like a workshop at their school?

Interviewee: Um no, we mostly reach out to them. So there’s a place called Tallebudgera Beach School, um, here on the Gold Coast. They do like, um, school camps, so a lot of the people contact their school camps and we—they contact the schools for us so we can go and speak to them. We have to reach out to the schools.

Interviewer: And is there a certain, um, like age, um specific age that you guys teach?

Interviewee: Um, so the age group would be mostly focusing on primary school kids, so that would be, um, grades five, six, um I think it’s four, five, six, so that’s like, um, eleven—um, ten to twelve, I think? Um, and we were supposed to do a high school program as well. I think the high schools are more busy with like a set kind of schedule, um, but one of the high schools did respond to us. We just didn't have the resources anymore to continue with the program.

Interviewer:Okay and then with those—with whether it's a campaign or education program, how would you and your team measure the success afterwards?

Interviewee:Um, it’s hard to say ‘cause we don't keep track of what people are doing, so we don’t, like, hand out surveys after a few months and see whether there has been a change in the kid’s behaviors or anything. Um, some schools that we do go to already had like an environmental program implemented, so like picking up rubbish or something like that. But, in terms of how, like, I dunno, we hope it’s like a lasting thing, but we don’t really know, to be honest.

Interviewer: Yeah, um, and what was the training process like to prepare to work on either the campaigns or the workshops?

Interviewee:Um, so I think a lot of it was, um, kind of Karl expecting me to have some prior knowledge—

Interviewer: --Mhm—

Interviewer:So, we—I just, at the very beginning, um, when I was very new, I would just show up to events and just watch Karl and see how he would do things and then progressively, um I would kind of do like little snippets of presentations and then, yeah, and then it comes to the point where maybe he’d want me to get—to do like, a presentation by myself. So, in terms of like the training… There’s not a lot of training, really. Um, you kind of just get thrown into it. And, like, if you can do this then, like, that’s what I’ve—that’s what happened to me, so I’ve literally been thrown into the deep end (laughs) all the time, um, but yeah, so in terms of training, probably not much.

Interviewer: Mhm, and what sorts of resources or materials do you use to plan?

Interviewee: Um, I think, like, when running up a presentation… probably using, like, journal articles, and, proper, like, properly cited work, to not misrepresent any information. But, otherwise, ‘cause I contact a lot of businesses and stuff, I just have to, like Google businesses, see who’s into the environmental thing, who’s not, who’s willing to support, what cafes around us are organic, stuff like that.

Interviewer: Mhm, and do you, like, follow—do you guys follow a specific work plan before going into it?

Interviewee:I definitely don't have a specific work plan, um, I think, as a volunteer, I—I go by how many hours a week I can do. So, if there’s obviously an event that would be more hours to do in a week. If there’s not much going on, I’m not necessarily doing a lot, um, so, for me there’s not really a plan. I just do a task when I get one.

Interviewer: Yeah, and, what, um—sorry, how do you build on… I know you discuss that you don't really, you guys don't really measure the success, but how… you know, obviously you can tell if something has been successful or not, so how do you build on the successes with new campaigns or educational programs?

Interviewee:Yeah, so with um, I guess, in regards to the previous question, I maybe I didn’t answer it properly, but um, we like, how we do it, is like, our last—our River Warriors Program has phases. So, phase one, the initial phase, was, um, doing the surveys of the Tallebudgera Creek, getting the data to see how rubbish was actually in the water. And then, the second phase, is just the one we’ve just finished now, was educating people about it. So, our first report card was like, this is what we’ve found, our second report card is like, this is what we’re—we did to mitigate all of this plastic. So I think, um, especially in River Warriors Program, we've done each phase and we’ve contacting council within the phase and then they’ve given us support, um, and, like with grants or whatever, to continue with the rest of the program. So, um, yeah.

Interviewer:Cool, and what's the process of planning an educational program or workshops? So I guess, with this question like, the duration of how long the planning is beforehand, whether it's like.. I don't—I don't know from the start to finish of like that final product before you present it?

Interviewee:I think, it varies on the event. Like if it’s a public knotthat we're trying to do, it takes a lot to get, uh, like we have to get flyers, um, we have to promote the event, we—sometimes have to do a door-knock to promote the event, a letter-box drop, um… There’s a lot of steps involved. Maybe like a week, depending on the size of the event, like an average event would take a week for the time to get everything organized, but that’s probably like a small event.

Interviewer: And, do you ever receive feedback if the workshop or campaign is successful from like any specific target audience or like if you are educating business clients or a school, um, do you ever receive feedback?

Interviewee: Um, we, when we did our school’s river clean, like, um, the teachers sent us an email the next day saying they were really happy and their kids loved it, and um, the beach school was happy to work with us on further programs and stuff like that, so I guess it’s just like a follow-up email, like thanking us, stuff like that, but um, yeah, in terms of like, the public… we haven’t really, after our cleanup events and—I don’t know, it’s very hard because some people are like, ‘oh, yeah you’re doing a really good job’ and then it’s just like, ‘oh, okay, that’s it’… like, they don’t really, kind of do anything further or want to do anything like that, so.

Interviewer: Yeah, and in terms of the workshops, the educational workshops is it… If you were to describe like the setting of it, like is it interactive, if it’s, if it’s—sorry, if it’s more like a presentational style, like what—what’s kind of the goal of the overall theme of the workshop?

Interviewee:Um, it depends on the workshop, so the one, um we’ve done a few weeks ago with the student film school, um, so they contacted us and then we did a presentation and then after the presentation, we had like a hands-on clean. So they came out, um, we informed them about the dangers of plastic, etcetera, and then we took them out on a beach clean and then they could see for themselves, like how polluted, the beaches were. Similar with the school’s clean, so we gave them—um, we went to a few different schools, gave them a presentation each and then it would be a follow up clean the next week. So we’d get all the school groups together, which was on the creek—

Interviewer:Nice.

Interviewee:So, um, yeah it would be hands-on. Some, some is just like—we try and make it hands-on, like we want something to come out of what we've done, so we try to do, um, a community like forum type of meeting and we wanted to get a… like a community group happening out of that. Um, but I think that really dwindled, and no one really came and it kind of just fell flat and nothing really happened out of it. So, I guess it depends on, depends on the event, really.

Interviewer:And, um, when—whether it's the campaigns or the workshops, is it always… is it a collaborative effort when it comes to the Positive Change team? Like, is it just one person on that specific project or is it a few people?

Interviewee: Um, I am the only Gold Coast Coordinator, so I.. I get support from Karl if I need to do anything, otherwise we do have a small volunteer team, but they’re very unreliable, so, that’s the thing with volunteers, that’s their own time, so, it’s up to them whether how much effort they want to put in. Um, so, they… two of the girls are really good, they will come to our events, like whenever they could, but mostly it’s Karl pretty much organizes the fact that we’re gonna have an event and I organize everything for the event. And that’s pretty much it, not a big group. (Laughs).

Interviewer: Mhm, nice. Okay, that is everything I have. Thank you so much for answering all these, I really appreciate it.

Interviewee:No worries, I’m happy to help.