Township Level Goal

The aim of this project is to encourage the residents of Meridian Township to increase sustainability at the household level and deepen their engagement with Green Meridian programming. We will achieve these goals through enhanced communications, by presenting materials in an easily understandable language by using clear visuals and information that is both accessible and digestible to diverse lay audiences. These materials will be structured to clearly depict the importance of the environmental issues and what actions community members can take to ameliorate problems at hand.

This communications guide includes a Green Meridian dissemination strategy so that individuals receive information that is pertinent to them. The desired impact of this project will be to increase awareness and general knowledge surrounding sustainability issues and interventions to the residents of Meridian Township and beyond. The project also seeks to increase community participation in Meridian Township's Green Grant program. To promote the Green Grant program, we will develop a grant specific media package that celebrates the successes of past grant recipient projects through the creation of various media deliverables (e.g. Fliers, Social Media Content, Press Releases, etc.). The grant specific content package cross-connects various existing Green Meridian programming to simultaneously increase overall community participation in Meridian Township sustainability initiatives and the grant program itself.

Significance: This project directly addresses Green Meridian's goals of: promoting best sustainability practice from the individual to township level, increasing resident engagement in Green Meridian initiatives, and making sustainability more marketable through developing new enviro-educational media. This project deviates from the status quo by adopting a novel media relations/communications strategy and developing new high quality educational materials. Another intended impact of this project is to increase participation in Green Meridian events and the Green Grant program, which will raise awareness of the importance of both individual and community sustainability and empower residents to help construct a 'greener' Meridian.

Regional Municipalities Goal: An additional goal of this project is to create a transferable communications strategy and media package (Green Communications Toolkit) for local governments across Michigan. The communication strategy is rooted in targeted outreach through the analysis of web analytics and by use of channeling new content to existing and new successful media platforms. The media toolkit includes a general communications strategy and ready-made templates for local governments with pre-made print/online content templates, one pagers on sustainability ‘hot topics’, and links to related information sources/guides. The desired impact of this project is to provide local governments with the tools necessary to make sustainability marketable and accessible to all citizens of Michigan.