Tailgating Outreach Project- Will O’Neil

For my service outreach project, I, along with David, Nate, Richard, and Stephen, walked around our campus and talked to tailgaters about why they should recycle. We provided them with trash bags as well as recycling bags and pins if they wanted them. Along with these items, we talked to them about which items could be recycled vs which items needed to be thrown away in the trash. We executed our plan around the Myers Quad area and alternated between each other for who would talk at each tailgate. We incorporated “intellectually stimulating” into our presentations by telling them that we were doing a project to help protect our campus. We incorporated “relevant to the audience” into our project due to the fact that the tailgaters being the ones we were trying to get to recycle and throw away trash. We incorporated “creative” into our project by coming up with our own plan to target the different tailgating groups in different ways. One thing that we discovered as we went around to different tailgates is that many tailgaters already came prepared with trash bags and recycling bags. Another thing that we discovered was that the tailgaters who did not already have trash bags and recycling bags were very accepting when it came to our trash and recycling bags. When we came up to each group, we looked to see whether they already had trash and recycling bags and we targeted each audience different. The ones that did not have bags were the ones that we had longer conversations with and gave them trash bags. With the ones that were prepared, we educated them on what was recyclable and what wasn’t. If I were to do this again, I would not change much. I would maybe come with a larger group to get to more people and more items to give out but everything else I would keep the same.This helped me better understand that other people outside of the class also want to keep our campus clean and want to help in that. Also, many people are already educated on what is recyclable and what isn’t. In the future, I know now what is recyclable and what isn’t, and also that people are typically very accepting if you approach them. I think our group did a great job of coming across how we wanted to since people accepted what we had to say. This assignment was effective because we were able to reach a large audience through our campus to help keep the campus clean through recycling and throwing away trash. The feedback we received from the community was very helpful because we found out that many people were already educated on what we were trying to deliver.