Green Allies

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Strategic Plan

Summary

Our Mission
To empower and support students as they become environmental sustainability leaders.

Our Vision
A world where students lead the way to a more sustainable future.


PLANT THE SEED (Focus: Middle and Senior High Schools)
  Goal: To assist middle and high schools start and grow active, student-led environmental clubs that have tangible impact on their communities.
  Programs to Achieve our Goal:

  • Use experience and expertise to advise and provide consultant-type work to help students and communities with sustainability initiatives.
  • “Plant the Seed” Manual: A blue print to help schools and their students start organizations or help to improve an existing group. The manual will focus on student engagement and community participation.
  • Mobile Sustainability Lab: This project involves the conversion of a donated RV into a traveling classroom to inspire the next generation of problem-solvers. Known as TESS (Transportable Environmental Sustainability Showcase) the RV will become a walk-through display of a futuristic sustainable world. The RV will come with pull-out lab stations for student activities and lab exercises related to developing the knowledge needed to create the world demonstrated inside. The RV will travel to schools, colleges, and community events.
  • GreenAllies Networking Site (social media website) A project that provides a complete social media platform for students to exchange concerns, ideas and best practices. This will also provide a platform to showcase projects and share ideas on how to be successful.
  • Youth Grow: A project dedicated to helping youth become food system leaders in their communities by helping create a sustainable food system that produces food in a way that supports economic, environmental, social and nutritional well-being. This will be accomplished through assisting students to become community leaders and agents of change in the area of sustainable food production. This could be through community gardens, through partnering with local farmers, or through consumer campaigns.
  • Green Allies Conferences and Networking: Design, plan and implement a conference series for middle and high school students to help inspire and empower them to be sustainability leaders and to provide the tools needed for success. • GreenAllies Challenge: (An interactive Middle and High School contest) This program will introduce us to new schools and provide a framework for the Foundation to assist schools. The “Challenge” is a contest that students at schools across the country can sign up for at the beginning of the year. Upon registration, each school will select a specific environmental goal for that school year. Every school in the contest will remain in contact with the Foundation through our new networking site www.greenalliesnetwork.org. Each school will be assigned a mentor from the organization who will provide assistance and guidance throughout the year and help each school succeed. The schools that demonstrate the greatest success will win cash prizes.


GREEN ALLIES NETWORK (Focus: College Student Engagement)
  Goal: To create a network or college students inspired and willing to engage in new sustainability initiatives on campus and in the community.
  Programs to Achieve Our Goal:

  • Green Allies Conferences: Continue to host a college conference each year with the goal of inspiring new initiatives back at their campuses. These conferences will provide the knowledge and tools to help empower students. It also gives the Foundation an opportunity to promote our services to support the student initiatives. We will follow through with help and assistance to every school seeking our services.
  • Leadership Program: A program to get college students to work with and lead sustainability efforts in their community. College volunteers will initiate service projects to and make connections off campus that benefit the local community. The Alliance will nurture and grow the community participation and locate community resources to assist with the project.
  • Internship Program: To actively recruit college students to work with the foundation and our programs. Especially at our Althouse Arboretum. Internship opportunities will be available year-round with an emphasis on the summer.


LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT (Focus: Student and Community Leaders)
  Goal: To provide the mechanisms that promote leadership skills in both students and the communities they work with.
  Note: The Althouse Arboretum is our greatest asset to help provide and model leadership opportunities for students
  Programs to Achieve our Goal:

  • Student Leadership Team: To maintain the fundamental idea that students must be involved in the design, improvements and management of both the Foundation and the Althouse Arboretum. Promote student leadership through the development and maintenance of the property. This will serve as a model for other communities.
  • Student-run Community Programming: Create a model program in which students lead educational programs at the Althouse Arboretum. This will include children’s programs as well as general education programs focusing on sustainability.
  • “Friends of the Arboretum” Program: To empower residents to work with students to meet the development goals of the Althouse Arboretum
  • Leadership Training Program: A program to promote leadership and cooperative learning skills in all demographics. This program will utilize the Arboretum and its Low Ropes Course as its central feature to create specialized activities led by students and other trained individuals.
  • Completion of the Althouse Arboretum: In order to utilize the resources of the land, an effort must be made to complete the Master Plan for the property that allows us to utilize the land for the leadership development initiatives.

STRATEGIC PLAN  for the period 2020 through 2023

 

Executive Summary

“Sustainability is an approach to look at the world, a critical way to understand and engage with the world, and the method by which we can change that world.” 

It is important that we go through the process of creating – and adopting – a Strategic Plan so that staff, volunteers, Board Of Directors, and the public understand the direction of the organization and the priorities that we feel are most important to GreenAllies.  This work is an accumulation of ideas and comments made by the Board Committee, the Student Advisory Board, our college network representatives, and our community volunteers. The process started with identifying our organization’s strengths and weaknesses. Ideas were presented on how to address those weaknesses and how to expand on our strengths.  After receiving feedback from the stakeholders, the Executive Director created the following list of goals and actions that we can take to move GreenAllies into the future.

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THIS DOCUMENT

 

Organizational Description

GreenAllies became an official 501c3 organization in 2014 under its original name The SAVE Alliance Foundation.  Throughout its existence, GreenAllies has advocated for a more sustainable future by empowering students to become the community leaders that promote environmental sustainability.  This is accomplished through the two major components of our organizational structure:  The GreenAllies Network and the Althouse Arboretum.

NETWORK:  Outreach to schools and clubs across the country to assist them in their work 

ALTHOUSE ARBORETUM: Our outdoor activity center devoted to developing student leaders

 

Values Statement

Empowerment  Students need to become leaders and not followers.  To be successful, students must be provided leadership training and given leadership opportunities.

Sustainability  We must both promote sustainability through student leadership and also practice sustainability in our own organization.

Community  Recognize that success in every project relies on support and involvement of the entire community.

Goals and Strategies

THE NETWORK

  1. Assist middle and high schools start and grow active, student-led environmental clubs that have tangible impact on their communities.

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Create a High School Conference
  2. Create a GreenAllies membership program for schools using professionals and college students
  3. Create a new and better online structure to share information and assist students
  4. Promote best practices by creating Student Sustainability Awards
  5. Expand the college network where student leaders are trained and share their work with other schools

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Create and maintain an electronic database of information, including podcasts, project summaries, and other resources for student groups
  2. Develop new connection strategies (electronic conferences, meet-up events, face-to-face meetings with schools)
  3. Create a Network Support paid position

 

  1. Develop tools and resources to assist student environmental groups         

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Complete manuals (conference, green spaces, “how to” for clubs)
  2. Create a “Conference Tool Kit” that can be borrowed by college groups to provide them with all the materials they need to conduct a conference.
  3. Create a strong, robust, mentor/adviser program
  4. Create a funding source for schools and student projects. Create an award program to distribute funds to schools
  1. 4. Operate a mobile showcase to increase awareness about sustainability and GreenAllies

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Complete the renovation and conversion of the RV
  2. Write a sustainability curriculum
  3. Create lab and student activities for schools
  4. Set up and participate in at least 10 school or community events

THE ALTHOUSE ARBORETUM

  1. Produce leaders in the environmental sustainability movement

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Expand student leadership opportunities
  2. Increase the number and variety of paid student internship opportunities
  3. Develop the Althouse Arboretum as an “Anchor Institution” for the region

6.Increase community and educational access opportunities for all as a student-run arboretum and outdoor education facility.

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Develop a community aquatic education center
  2. Expand property and features to provide additional education
  3. Develop curriculum for underserved populations which includes overnight accommodations
  4. Expand our parking facilities
  5. Develop a marketing strategy to better inform the public of our activities

 

  1. To improve community involvement

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Create an online volunteer engagement service
  2. Develop in incentive program for volunteers

 

  1. Improve stewardship of the Althouse Arboretum and additional properties

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Through restoration from tree removal, create improved landscapes and forests
  2. Continue to improve on natural arboretum certification requirements
  3. Promote pollinators, beneficial insect populations, healthy forest ecosystem, and improve water quality
  4. Create a part-time Land Manager position to maintain property
  1. Promote a sustainable food system through student-led programing

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Develop a fully functioning “farm of the future” run entirely by students
  2. Expand and improve our Farmer’s Market
  3. Develop programs around sustainable food (traveling kitchen, value-added workshops, special dinners, etc…)
  4. Complete the pizza oven and add “healthy meals” to our programming
  5. Work with regional partners to develop a “sustainable food system” from production to access

THE ORGANIZATION To strengthen the organization’s ability to perform its mission

10.Build capacity to expand our mission

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Create a functional plan on using the arboretum to create sustainable income for the organization.
  2. Improve data collection for better evaluation of program success and use
  3. Develop a local membership program based on monthly payments
  4. Improve success of the Amazing Raise Fundraising Campaign

 

11.Expand promotion and marketing of GreenAllies

Action Plan Strategies:

  1. Create and implement a communications/marketing plan
  2. Improve online presence and create podcast and video programming to expand our network