The Ocean Project continually tries to provide our Partners with some of the best resources and strategic tools to help you become even more effective at communicating for conservation. This month we wanted to highlight a few new helpful resources to enhance your conservation efforts.
 

The She Spot is a new guide written by Lisa Witter and Lisa Chen, two leading PR professionals, specifically aimed at nonprofit organizations. Since women are a key audience at our Partner zoos, aquariums, and museums (ZAMs), and since women vote more, volunteer more, and contribute to twice as many charities as men, we thought our Partners should know about this helpful resource. Clearly, understanding the motivation behind women's contributions and interest - and the methods to appeal to them - is key to ZAMs effectively reaching them. Indeed, the authors argue that to be successful at changing behaviors and winning support for your efforts, we need to make a greater - and primary - effort to engage women.

The book offers a practical -- and provocative -- primer on how nonprofits can strengthen their outreach to this highly motivated and engaged segment of the population. They reject the narrow "pink" approach to gender marketing, showing readers how to leverage the fact that nearly all issues are women's issues. They explain the sometimes counter-intuitive nuances required when engaging in gendered marketing and include real-life case studies of corporate and public sector marketing campaigns that successfully broadened their appeal so that they connected strongly with women as well as men. As part of their recommendations, they have developed a nonprofit strategy emphasizing the "Four C's" - Care, Connect, Cultivate, and Control (of course, we believe that there are a few other C's that merit emphasis in your work - remember to check out the Seven C's Pledge!)

Find out more about the book and listen to the authors on a recent Communications Network webinar.
 

Connect with The Goodman Center and register for an online workshop today!
 

This month we are highlighting some important presentations, articles and resources from Good Measures: New Approaches to Evaluation, a conference held May 22, 2008 and sponsored by FSG Social Impact Advisors and Stanford Social Innovation Review.  You can learn about emerging approaches to evaluation, major trends in the field, case studies of successful efforts, listen to audio recordings, and access speakers' presentations. Session topics included: Moving from Insight to Action; Evaluation: New Ways of Working Together; Assessing Performance and Refining Strategy: The Foundation CEO Perspective - a talk by Carol Larson, president and CEO of The David and Lucile Packard Foundation; and Evaluation for Learning: Creating Cultures of Inquiry.

Access the conference resources.
Listen to an inspirational talk by the Packard Foundation's Carol Larson.
Download the PDF (3.67 MB) of Moving from Insight to Action.
 

As part of its cycle of evaluation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation recently conducted a strategic review of its Environment Program's Habitat Conservation Initiative. This review assessed the initiative's efforts over the past five years, noting achievements and areas for improvement while helping to identify priorities for the initiative's next phase of grant-making.

While not directly focused on the ocean, a significant part of that review included a "National Listening Project" that we think our Partners will find useful. It included a national survey of stakeholder opinion on the challenges to conservation over the next five to 10 years and the opportunities for philanthropic impact. The Keystone Center conducted the survey of over 1,000 stakeholders. To assess and summarize the findings of the survey, the Foundation also convened an expert review panel.

Read information about the review process and findings.
Read the survey outcomes.
Read the external review panel's meeting summary.
 

By Tim Radford
The Guardian - July 9, 2008

Fish catches in some of the poorest nations in the world have been grossly underestimated, scientists warned. The implication is that global fish stocks, already widely acknowledged to be under heavy pressure, are in far more in danger than thought. The underreporting particularly threatens the hundreds of millions of poor people around the world who rely on fish for subsistence.

A reconstruction of actual catches in 20 places around the globe showed that fish landings that were not reported were at least as high as the declared catch, and sometimes more than 16 times higher.

"This is underreporting of such magnitude that it boggles the mind," said Professor Daniel Pauly, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The global database of world fish catches is maintained by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome. It is based on voluntary declaration, and often misses subsistence and recreational fishing.

The new study, presented to the 11th international coral reef symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was conducted by scientists from the Sea Around Us Project, an international research group based at the University of British Columbia. They visited the locations, questioned local officials and made their own estimates of subsistence fishery calculations since 1950.  They found huge disparities.

Read the full story.
Access some of the best websites on fisheries.
Photo Credit:NOAA Photo Library.
 

The Governors of California, Oregon and Washington recently launched an historic action plan to address challenging ocean and coastal management issues along the West Coast. This significant step comes on the heels of another precedent-setting state-driven ocean conservation action, with the passage into law of the Massachusetts Ocean Act of 2008.

The West Coast Governors' Ocean Action Plan is the result of a 2006 agreement signed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire. The regional agreement forged a long-term partnership to tackle obstacles facing the Pacific Ocean and its coastal communities.

The action plan commits the three states to seven priority areas related to ocean protection: ensuring clean coastal waters and beaches; protecting and restoring healthy ocean and coastal habitats; promoting the effective implementation of ecosystem-based management of ocean and coastal resources; reducing adverse impacts of offshore development; increasing ocean awareness and literacy among citizens; expanding ocean and coastal scientific information, research and monitoring; and fostering sustainable economic development throughout diverse coastal communities.

Each action within the plan contains benchmarks and a timeframe for action. The governors have formally committed to report on the status of actions at the end of two years.

Read the full story and the action plan in its entirety.
Photo Credit: NOAA Photo Library.
 

Adapted from story by Maura Judkis
US News and World Report - July 23, 2008

Just in time for the recent announcement of America's most and least walkable cities, Google has added a tool for finding walking directions to its maps. The Google Lat Long Blog details the latest improvements: Walking directions ignore whether or not streets are one-way, offering the fastest point from point A to point B.

The walking directions are still under development, however, so off-road features like pedestrian paths won't show up yet. Neither will shortcuts through traffic circles or parks. For cities where Google has mapped public transit directions, you'll now find walking directions automatically from the point where you'd exit the subway or bus stop.

We encourage ZAM Partners to post this new tool on your websites to encourage environmental sustainability!

Read the full story.
Find the best walking routes for yours visitors!
 

The Ocean Project continues to encourage our Partners and friends to take action on initiatives to help advance environmental education and literacy. The Campaign for Environmental Literacy, an Ocean Project Partner, has been instrumental in helping advocate for a number of EE initiatives. They report that the last 12 months have brought unprecedented attention to EE, thanks to the work of many of our Partners.

On July 31, Congress overwhelmingly passed all provisions of the Higher Education Sustainability Act (HESA). This is the first federal environmental education grant-making program authorized in 18 years.

One piece of legislation in particular that we continue to highlight for our Partners is the No Child Left Inside Act (HR 3036). Originally intended as an amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act, which is stuck in Congress, it has been modified and passed by the pertinent House Committee to re-authorize the long expired National Environmental Education Act of 1990 for one year. It is important to rally support for this bill as it comes to a full House vote in early September.

Partners and friends can help make this happen. You can learn more about this and other important EE bills, and how you can help, by going to Campaign for Environmental Literacy.
 

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an Ocean Project Partner, has produced an inaugural review highlighting processes, products, and technologies that are making the biz world more eco-friendly. The first edition of the annual review highlights more than 20 processes, products and technologies that were chosen based on four criteria: good for business, good for the environment, ready to be implemented and innovative. EDF stayed away from concepts still in the research and development phase or anything that has been widely implemented and documented. We thought some of our Partners would find this report inspirational and useful in producing tangible business benefits from environmental efficiency.

Read the full GreenBiz story.
Read the full EDF report in PDF: Innovations Review 2008.
 

The Ocean Project is pleased to offer our Partners a unique green product to sell in your retail stores -- one that provides and easy and direct way for your visitors to help the planet, raises awareness about a healthy ocean, and helps raise money for The Ocean Project to continue our work with you, and our other Partners.  Developed by the founders of 41pounds.org, a Supporting Business Partner of The Ocean Project, the newly available Stop Junk Mail Kit contains step-by-step instructions for customers to use to stop their household junk mail and unwanted catalogs, resulting in significant benefits for our blue planet.

Ocean Project Partners can be the first to offer this unique kit to your visitors. The producers are making this special offer available now for our Partners, even before traditional retail stores.

Wholesale product pricing is very reasonable and with each kit sold, five trees will be planted and The Ocean Project will receive $5 to help us continue our collaborative work around the world. Each kit will also include information about helping to create a more sustainable society and a healthy world ocean.

If interested in this special offer, please contact Sander DeVries: 866.417.4141 or sander@stopjunkmailkit.com.

View the quick slide show to learn more about how your organization or institution can retail this kit to stop household junk mail or visit: http://www.stopjunkmailkit.com/.
 

Whether you are on the coast or far inland, your organization or institution can still play a key role in this year's 2008 International Coastal Cleanup, to be held September 20th.

Aquatic and community cleanups of all types can be organized at your nearby stream, river, lake, beach, reef, or other freshwater or coastal habitat.

During these increasingly popular events, volunteers record each piece of trash picked up at sites around the world. Local and regional coordinators then collect the raw data. The Ocean Conservancy uses this data to produce a global snapshot of the issue of trash in our ocean. Last year, 378,000 volunteers from 76 countries and 45 states cleared six million pounds of trash from oceans and waterways and recorded every piece of trash collected.

Learn how to organize an aquatic cleanup.
Get involved with the International Coastal Cleanup!
Photo Credit: NOAA Photo Library.
 

The 2008 ASTC Annual Conference will be October 18-21, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hosted by the Franklin Institute, this year's conference theme is "In the Public Eye - Science Centers at the Crossroads of Science and Culture." Conference sessions will challenge participants to examine the ASTC community's responsibility to both scientific and public constituencies and focus on six areas for further exploration: Research in Learning, Current Science, Technology, Public Policy and Issues, Marketing and Communications, and Leadership and Management.

Learn more about the 2008 ASTC Conference.
 

We would also like to welcome our newest Supporting Partner: New Mexico BioPark Society and Albuquerque Biological Park, including in particular the Albuquerque Aquarium. Thank you for your important contribution!

Thanks also to the Beach Grass Gift Shop for their recent contribution to The Ocean Project as a result of proceeds received during World Ocean Day month. Due to customer response, they have extended their "Seas the Day" environmental awareness effort from a World Ocean Day month-long focus to a year-round emphasis.

Also, a special thank you goes out to the Grain and Salt Society, for their recent contribution to The Ocean Project, a result of proceeds received during World Ocean Day weekend sales of their products.

We couldn't do what we do without support like this from our Partners. Consider becoming a Sustaining or Supporting Partner!