To promote ocean and climate change literacy that addresses the needs of the Gulf of Mexico region, six aquariums based on the Gulf are partnering to educate the communities on both risks and ways to contribute locally to sustainability. The aquariums are combining community outreach programs, stewardship promotion, social networking and workshops for non-formal educators to reach broad audiences throughout the Gulf in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Mexico. Each partner is developing content that emphasizes local ecosystems and consequences of climate change, tailoring stewardship activities to address them. Over five years, the aquariums will reach out to diverse audiences in their communities, which have populations that total over five million people. With evaluated programs, exhibits, and websites in place, the partners will be able to continue building stewardship and educating their communities after the award ends.
This 2-year program will advance the way informal ocean science education institutions reach underserved/underrepresented families by facilitating and formalizing relationships between informal science education centers and community based organizations. Project teams in five New England communities will collaborate to create a practicable, outdoor ocean-science learning experience specifically designed for families in their shared service area. Building on a needs assessment produced through target-audience focus groups, the program will combine coastal field experiences with web-based interactive and participatory learning activities developed and tested by the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL; www.eol.org/) and the Northeast Regional Association for Coastal and Ocean Observing Systems (NERACOOS) to support in-field and ongoing learning. Science content will be informed and vetted by NOAA research scientists and work between the science centers and community organizations will be professionally facilitated. Formats and effectiveness will be evaluated by external evaluators and revised throughout the project.
In October 2009, the Tennessee Aquarium began an ambitious program, Connecting Tennessee to the World Ocean (CTWO), funded by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. CTWO consists of several individual projects, all intended to increase the ocean literacy of Aquarium audiences and to promote their adoption of an ocean stewardship ethic. This formative evaluation report summarizes the extent to which the Aquarium has made progress toward these goals in the first year of the project and provides an information base for identifying opportunities to strengthen