WOW! EDUCATION & INSPIRATION
If you can envisage The Compass as a common good campaign, imagine an array of educational and inspirational resources that would inspire WOW! (wandering, observing, and wondering).
These WOW! resources might include:
1) Trail and Site Signage —Directional, educational, and inspirational, the signage would educate people about The Compass, Compass Points, and the interdependent relationships between desert, desert species, natural resources, and humans
2) Website — Offering a trail/Compass Point finder, events and volunteer opportunities calendar*, connections to collaborative partners' websites, and an online journal of stories that reflect not only The Compass trails but the inner compasses of our desert's servant leaders
3) App — An app that provides a variety of K-12 reading level educational tools, plus resources such as podcasts, meditation recordings, music, and other features that support mindfulness, compassion, and care for the self, other humans, and habitats
4) Marketing Campaign — Promotion of The Compass as an experience of the desert's landscape and our own inner landscape
5) Social Media Sites — Promoting The Compass and encouraging social engagement from the public
6) Merchandise Store — Offering iconic merchandise that serves as a funding source for its mission
* Events and volunteer opportunities implemented by The Compass and third-parties
WOW! RESOURCES
WOW! Sagebrush Resource
If we wander often, the gift of knowledge will come. — Arapaho Proverb
You're off to great places, today is your day. Your mountain is waiting so get on your way. - Dr. Seuss
Healthy Humans
Today's educational landscape is changing with public, private, and charter schools, homeschooling and unschooling allowing choices that fit families and their children.
Web- and app-based learning tools ranging from podcasts, stories, games, and more are increasingly used in all modes of education. Such tools would be vital to The Compass effort to nurture healthy connections between humans and our habitat that ensure Southern Nevada's sustainability for generations to come.
Healthy Habitat
Our desert inspires through compassionate design. Consider the Bursage bush. A cornerstone plant of the Mojave Desert, it is called a nurse or umbrella plant as it protects its seedlings and those of other plants from heat and foraging animals.
The Compass educational-inspirational tools will appeal to people's internal compasses with questions such as e.g., Who is the community that serves as an umbrella to protect you? And, how can you be like a nurse plant for fellow humans, our habitat, or a specific species?
Healthy Economy
For the tourism and tech industries, investing in, proving, and promoting their long-term commitment to help the environment has become essential.
Supporting The Compass will demonstrate dedication to our desert environment beyond their respective buildings. It will improve our landscape and the quality of life attractive to their investors, their clientele, and importantly the employees they look to attract and retain.
MY WAY. MY WHY.
Throughout my career, I've related the creative process of developing public awareness and public relations campaigns to harnessing stars or catching fireflies in a jar. Each star and each firefly has its own glow but bring those stars or those fireflies together and you create an illuminating light.
The Compass concept includes a collection of ideas all aimed at illuminating the ways our community stakeholders live out their commitment to the thriving of our community — humans and habitats.
Importantly, The Compass project reflects the glow of hundreds of people whose ideas, convictions, and stories of resiliency have inspired me and my creativity. To each of them (not listed here but in my creative journal), I am grateful.