Project Reflection- Nate Ware

For my outreach project, I went with David, Richard, Will, and Stephen to tell tailgaters about recycling and encourage them to do so. We walked around Myers Quad and handed out trash bags and recycling bags to tailgaters and talked to them about the benefits of recycling. We also offered pins and fliers that help identify what is and what isn’t recyclable. Ahead of time we scoped out the tailgating locations that we felt we could help inform the greatest amount of people. We decided that Myers quad, since there is a large population of tailgaters there every week, would be the best place to conduct this project. We took turns walking up to tailgates and handing out recycling bags and talking to them about how recycling can benefit the sustainability here at UGA. By recycling and making sure trash is placed in trash bags we can make sure the tailgating tradition continues and the campus will remain as beautiful as ever. We addressed the three characteristics of information delivery. We always made sure to lead with an introduction followed by an interesting fact to make it intellectually stimulating. If we noticed the tailgate was missing anything in particular we made sure to offer it to them to keep it relevant to the audience. We were all competing to come up with more creative ways to introduce ourselves to engage the audience to what we had to say. One of the discoveries I made was that most tailgaters were very eager to do their part to help keep the campus beautiful, something that going into the day I was not confident of. I also learned that a lot of people already come prepared with trash bags, but they often forget about recycling. We had much more difficulty handing out trash bags because more people already had them. We looked for tailgates without trash bags and recycling bags in order to decide which tailgates we should approach. We also made sure not to approach if we felt we would be interrupting a conversation that may be important or personal. Personally, if I were to do something differently it would be prepare more factual evidence ahead of time in case people asked more follow up questions. Through this experience, I was able to see the causes of pollution through tailgating and how it can affect the watershed, but I also learned that people are willing to do their best to help out where they can. I learned valuable communication skills and more confidence when it comes to approaching groups and lobbying ideas. This exercise was definitely successful for me. I learned about presenting an issue to other people and helping them be the solution rather than the problem.