Plan

Sustainability action process – Step 3

Plastic surrounds protect seedlings planted into the ground which is covered by mulch.
Planting seedlings may be one of the actions in the poject proposal.

Develop a proposal for increasing biodiversity at school. Include a clear statement of action, criteria for success, agreement by stakeholders and a documented plan.

Record your proposal outline in your learning journal.

Develop the proposal for action

  • What type of biodiversity improvement action we have planned?
  • How will we judge the success of our improvements?
  • What are the individual steps required?
  • What budget or resources are required for each step?
  • Who will be responsible for these actions?
  • What could we do if things don’t go to plan?

Document your proposal in your learning journal.

Make sure your proposal includes:

  • a plan for action
  • the budget, people and time required
  • the steps you will follow to implement your plan
  • the success criteria and how you will record evidence of how successful you have been
  • what you will do if the implementation does not go to plan or schedule.

Prepare to communicate the proposal

  • With whom do we need to share our plan?
  • What will the changes cost or involve?
  • Who will undertake the actions?
  • How will we use feedback to improve our proposal?
A high school student working on an iPad.
Prepare a presentation for the school executive.

Prepare a presentation

  • Prepare a presentation for your school executive that explains the issues relating to improving biodiversity at school. Try Google slides for your presentation.
  • Include statistics and charts from your audit to provide evidence of the issue or help justify your solution. Explain ideas using diagrams. Try SketchUp for schools.
A horizontal graph plotting time periods along a timeline for project components.
Use a Gantt chart or similar for project planning.Zorkow | CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

Develop project timeline

  • Develop a timeline to describe the main actions in your project and their sequence or order. Plot it as a Gantt chart using Google sheets.
  • Clear communication of your proposal is essential for success. Read the 10 tips for speaking to an audience.

Gain agreement on the proposal

  • Has our class and have others in the school agreed to our ideas?
  • Has our principal agreed?
  • What modifications are needed to gain the endorsement of the principal and school executive?

Effective plans need to have agreement from all the people that will be involved or affected by the project.

The consensogram tool can help achieve consensus.

Present the proposal for action

  • Who is the audience for the presentation of our final proposal?

As a group, present the final proposal in a short presentation or document.

This is the final plan and should include all of the necessary information to proceed and make your proposed changes happen.

Do you now have the approvals you need to proceed with your plan?