Salmon Points Reward Program

Year 2009
Proponent Langley Environmental Partners Society
Project type Engagement
FSWP funding source Living Rivers
Grant amount $15,000
Total project value $70,075
ID number 09-LR105-E

Location: Fraser Valley

Project Summary

Overview

LEPS will offer salmon chums the ability to enhance salmon and watersheds, through knowledge and action, with an emphasis on removing the barriers to behaviour change. This program will engage participants in a greater context, building a sense of community around salmon conservation. Members will be proud of their salmon friendly practices, further engaging their friends, contacts and wider community members.

The basis of the project requires individuals to register and indicate the actions they are taking or will adopt. Individuals will earn points redeemable for workshops, services, incentives, prompts, public recognition and other tools that develop social norms and public commitments. Actions will be weighted in accordance to perceived benefit to salmon and watersheds.

The program will make use of commitments, social diffusion, prompts and incentives to encourage citizen involvement in salmon stewardship activities, in the community and at home.

At this pilot stage registration in the program will be person-to-person or via email, with members tracked in a database. Once the community grows, LEPS will seek to create a web portal where an on-line community would grow, allowing members to report their salmon friendly actions. This on-line community would be linked from http://www.leps.bc.ca and would ideally be managed through http://www.thinksalmon.com.

Objectives
1. To develop a social network for salmon conservation that allows members to be publicly proud of their conservation actions.
2. To engage community in the wider context of community based social marketing, using CBSM as a tool to further encourage behaviour change, leading to greater understanding of salmon and watersheds.
3. To engage a greater segment of community in salmon conservation, including those not already involved. Involve this segment for reasons other than salmon- focusing on the Ōsocial normÕ aspect.

Methods

LEPS has been contracted by FSWP as the regional coordinator in the Lower Fraser region, as part of the project LR176 Enabling Behaviour Change. This project seeks to:
- define a collaborative regional strategy for priority behaviour change,
- build capacity of regional partners in social marketing,
- initiate projects that implement the regional strategy,
- build the fundraising capacity of groups to undertake such projects, and
- contribute to a cross-region working group for strategic thinking and collaboration on identifying and promoting behaviour change

Salmon Points Reward Program will continue with the objectives of the above noted FSWP-led project.

Using data gathered between October-December 2008, the priority threats and their associated behaviour changes have been ranked, and will form the basis for the behaviour changes promoted within the program. LEPS will seek to further identify barriers to behaviour change through engagement of community members with focus groups, polling at events, surveys, etc, attempting to access a sector of individuals not currently involved in environmental stewardship. This will increase our capacity to offer specific behaviour changes for the benefit of salmon. 

This project will direct outreach towards a strategic sector, with an appeal to take a specific actions for the benefit of salmon and watersheds. At the commencement of the pilot program the target audience will be those members of the community who are already invested in LEPS as volunteers or regular attendees to events, and stewardship group members. Outreach will also include face-to-face contact at local community festivals. At such outreach events the program will exist as a separate booth to LEPS, with staff and volunteers dedicated solely to recruiting Ōsalmon chumsÕ.

As this project moves forward the strategic sector will expand to include community members not ordinarily involved in salmon stewardship. The goal is to initiate contact with attendees at community festivals that do not necessarily have an environmental focus.

This program will be integrated into every program component of LEPS, and will not exist as a separate piece to our core programming areas.



Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Comment:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Comments

Be the first to leave a comment on this page!