Outreach and Engagement
Training Program
About the program.
ISE was pleased to offer the Outreach and Engagement Training Program in the Spring of 2022. Based on direct feedback from a survey to our stakeholders, these trainings were designed to help Recycling Coordinators and community leaders in their endeavors to educate and empower residents in New York and Puerto Rico on sustainable materials management and how to recycle right.
For communities that participate in all three workshops, additional assistance and funding were available from ISE for Recycling Coordinators/Community Leaders to implement a resident engagement project using tools and skills gained through the training.
Part One: FREE Trainings for Recycling Leaders
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Training One: Creating Effective messages
Starting with a general communications overview, this training will cover branding and crafting effective messages with diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in mind. This training will also have a workshop component, providing you the opportunity to investigate an existing piece of your own messaging.
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Training two: Getting the Message Out
Here, we are calling in the social media experts to talk algorithms, ad management, and explore the diverse ways of getting your message out. Bring your outreach goals, and we will provide you with the skillful guidance on how to best achieve them.
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Training three: Engaging the Community
This training is about putting it all together. You've learned how to craft the message, share the message, and now we want to engage the message. In this training we will explore how to give our messages sustained life and action through community outreach and volunteer management for Recycling Coordinators.
Recycling leaders from the City of Troy started a textile reuse and recycling program with a local public school. In effort to replicate and improve the model at other public schools, increase textile reuse and recycling visibility, as well as provide a source of revenue for the schools, the creation of these magnets is a part of a larger campaign to increase residents’ access to textile diversion.
Part Two: Small Seed Funding & Technical Assistance
On May 5, 2022, the Town of Brookhaven launched a waste reduction project in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity. Located at the town’s landfill drop-off area, Brookhaven residents can donate usable goods such as furniture and appliances to be sold at Habitat's ReStore. The Town of Brookhaven utilized the small seed funding to create this graphic and further promote the available waste reduction opportunity in local newspapers and social media.
Town of Bethlehem, New York
The Town of Bethlehem, New York has partnered up with a local church to launch a Food Scraps Drop Spot program. Utilizing insights gained from the OETP program, we worked with the Town of Bethlehem to create an infographic, a brand-new logo, and fund the purchase of a small shed to store the collected food scrap bins until they can be picked up by program leaders and brought to the town’s composting facility. To learn more about the program visit: https://www.townofbethlehem.org/609/Compost
Troy, New York
Isabela, Puerto Rico
Brookhaven, New York
Postcard for participating residents
Door hanger for participating residents and recycling facility
Promotional newspaper and social media ad.
Recycling leaders from Isabela, Puerto Rico were seeking to revamp their previously created recycling outreach materials. They shared with us a postcard, magnet, and a door hanger and we assisted them with color, layout, and linguistic choices in order to maximize the outreach of these crucial materials.
Stay Tuned for our next round of OETP in 2023
Coordinating recycling programs is a lot of work. Recycling managers and coordinators have to deal with facility management, material marketing, characterization studies, special collection events, overseeing hauler contracts, reporting, public relations, and the list goes on.
Community outreach and engagement is just one aspect of diverse and complex systems that Recycling Coordinators are responsible for, and yet getting residents to understand how to recycle right is critical to the success of our recycling efforts.
This free training series aims to provide relevant communications and outreach concepts and practices that can help Recycling Coordinators to communicate about their programs more efficiently and effectively as well as deploy opportunities to mobilize residents to help amplify the message!