What viewers are saying!

"[The webcast] is a valuable resource for our...campus and community. It conveys a 'we can do it' spirit and it is a blueprint for action. Thank you for this effective tool!"

Suzanne Sedlacek
Chair, Student Affairs and Enrollment Management and Environmental Awareness and Sustainability Committee
Northern Illinois University

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About the Program

The cutting edge of carbon reduction in colleges and universities is behavior change and community engagement. David Gershon, one of the world’s foremost experts on behavior change and community engagement will share proven strategies and tools from his three decades of research to help you engage staff, students, and community members during this live, streamed webcast.  

David Gershon is the author of eleven books, including the best-seller Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds, and Social Change 2.0: A Blueprint for Reinventing Our World (winner of four book awards). His research has proven that people are willing to change when they have a compelling vision and the necessary tools to help bring it to fruition. To stay motivated, people need others of like mind going on the journey with them. And, with a well-designed change platform that is replicable and scalable, these behavior changes can be widely disseminated throughout a college or university campus, community, country and across the planet. He calls this approach “social change 2.0.”

Gershon’s social change strategies and tools have helped tens-of-thousands of households achieve a 25 percent carbon footprint reduction, and over 300 US cities have implemented them community-wide. They have also spread to China, Japan, Korea, Canada, and Australia.

Webcast Discussion Points Include:  

• How to mobilize large numbers of people to participate in a local climate change initiative, using the Global Warming Café community engagement tool as an example;
• How to achieve a participation rate of at least 25 percent – the community empowerment methodology; 
• Five social change design principles and how to apply them to your own campus sustainability initiatives:
  • The practice of empowerment
  • The craft of transformation
  • How we can design and implement transformative social innovation
  • Utilizing synergy to accelerate social change
  • How to take a social innovation to scale
• Ways to empower individuals to reduce their carbon footprint by 25 percent or more – the 'Low Carbon Diet' behavior change program;
• How to achieve 25 to 75 percent community participation in the 'Low Carbon Diet' over a three year period – the Cool Community campaign strategy; and how the City of Davis, California initiated their journey to become a carbon neutral city by using this strategy;
• And how you—as an administrator, student or faculty member—can bring these strategies and tools to your campus and community. 

  "Imagine for a moment Americans coming together to do something about climate change. First starting in our institutions of higher learning and then emanating out into their communities. Imagine them speaking their minds and hearts about the global crisis facing us, being offered the tools to reduce their own carbon footprints, and the strategies to empower others to do the same. America represents 20 percent of the planet’s carbon footprint. If, as citizens, we were able to reduce our carbon footprint by 25 percent we could buy ourselves the critically needed time for the longer-term technological and political solutions."                

                                                   David Gershon

• Sustainability coordinators
• Students and student groups
• Faculty
• College and university administrators
• Local governmental and municipal leaders who have a college or university in their town
• State and federal governmental agencies
• College and university planners
• Others who are interested in, or already working with, sustainability initiatives in higher education