Asthma Free School Zone: Idle-Free NYC

Organization Information:

Organization Name

Real World Foundation d.b.a. Asthma Free School Zone

Organization's Mission Statement

The AFSZ works to keep kids in school by improving air quality and, in turn, reducing asthma-related illness and absenteeism. From Monday to Friday, 8 to 4, schools hold an extraordinary concentration of children with extraordinary vulnerability to pollution. Besides pushing for public policy, the AFSZ posts health-protective signage, trains school and community members about environment and health, and helps schools take steps to become safer and healthier learning places for children.

Organization Website

http://www.afsz.org

Submission Information

Impact Essay

When Rebecca Kalin brought coffee to a meeting with potential funders, it wasn’t the gesture that impressed them; it was the jackets on the cups. Ms. Kalin had created cupsleeves with our campaign logo and the logo of the potential funders. When the funders asked in amazement how it could happen, Ms. Kalin had her proposal ready.

You could say that we like to make an impact.

Ms. Kalin is founding director for the Asthma Free School Zone (AFSZ), a small non-profit organization that aims to reduce asthma-related absenteeism in NYC schools by improving air quality. Given that 25% of children suffer from asthma in some city neighborhoods, our efforts to reduce air pollution affect the health and safety of our most vulnerable population.

Since 2001, our primary focus has been an idle-free NYC. For three years, beginning with handmade lapel pins made in Illustrator, we pushed for a one-minute vehicle idling limit in school zones. This winter, Mayor Bloomberg signed that measure into law – the first such law in the nation. In honor of World Asthma Month, we are producing our 2nd annual 5-borough public awareness campaign to raise awareness about health and environmental impacts of idling, and encourage drivers to reduce vehicle emissions by turning off at the curb.

Using Illustrator, we designed Idle-Free NYC posters for public buses, with an estimated 18 million impressions for bus tails and 14 million impressions for bus cards. With Photoshop, we created bilingual posters and windshield-wiper flyers. Once a year, using Acrobat Professional, we assemble kits for 100 schools to take stop-idling action in their neighborhoods, and provide them with materials to host Stop-Idling Days at their schools.

Because behavioral change is not easy, our materials have to be convincing. The caliber of the design and production convey the legitimacy of the campaign and the message. With Adobe, a bootstrap organization like ours can create high-quality, professional-looking materials at our own pace and with our own vision without having to spend time or money on outside consulting.

The Idle-Free NYC campaign is a collaborative grassroots effort in a city of 8 million people. The question we ask is not, “What can you do to help us?” but “What can we do to help you?” When a partner needs to produce our literature in a different format or convey our message in another language, we can do it because we control document creation. Expanding our reach requires being able to turn these suggestions into reality.

This spring 1,100,000 NYC children will have a chance for cleaner air in the school zone. Fifty thousand New Yorkers will hold Idle-Free NYC cupsleeves while sipping their morning brew. We are grateful for the ability to create our own materials to deliver a message that has such far-reaching consequences. The Idle-Free NYC campaign will continue to utilize Adobe products to make incremental improvements in the air quality of our city and the health of our communities.

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AdobeSubmission.pdfSubmitted by Rebecca on April 15, 2009 - 2:09pm

Forest, Sea, and Village: AlTo's Conservation Awareness Campaign for Sea Turtles and Wild Nature in Indonesia

Organization Information:

Organization Name

Alliance for Tompotika Conservation (AlTo)

Organization's Mission Statement

The Alliance for Tompotika Conservation (“AlTo”) is dedicated to conserving the unparalleled natural heritage of the lands and waters surrounding Mt. Tompotika, Sulawesi, Indonesia. Effective, innovative, and efficient, AlTo protects endangered species, tropical rainforests, and coral reefs while promoting the dignity and self-sufficiency of local communities in a changing world. In Tompotika and beyond, AlTo believes that the quality of our human lives is bound up to the health of our natural environment.

Organization Website

http://www.tompotika.org

Submission Information

Impact Essay

The Alliance for Tompotika Conservation (“AlTo”) is a non-profit international grassroots partnership dedicated to conserving the unparalleled natural heritage of the area surrounding Mt. Tompotika, Sulawesi, Indonesia—one of the world’s most critical centers for global conservation. Against such urgent and widespread threats as tropical deforestation, destruction of coral reefs, and poaching of endangered species, there is a tremendous need in Tompotika to educate local residents on the global irreplaceability of their environment, and how and why they can help to conserve it. AlTo trains local Tompotikan staff and uses Adobe products (Illustrator, PhotoShop, and InDesign) to produce outreach materials which are used to educate schoolchildren and villagers about environmental protection. Using these outreach materials produced in Indonesian, the newly-trained and equipped AlTo staff have brought a compelling interactive presentation to over 3000 children and adults who have never before in their lives heard about how intact rainforests keep the earth’s climate stable and air and water clean, or how sea turtles face extinction due to poaching. After the presentations, the Adobe-based outreach materials, including notebooks, brochures, coloring sheets, and posters (all printed on 100% pcw recycled paper), are distributed free of charge, and are highly valued for their beauty and educational value in this impoverished region.

AlTo’s Conservation Awareness Campaign, though barely a year old, is extremely popular with Tompotika villagers, teachers, and students, and Tompotikans are gaining a new pride in and knowledge of their natural heritage. Moreover, these efforts have already resulted in tangible conservation gains.

For example, last November, villagers who had previously participated in AlTo’s Conservation Awareness Campaign noticed human activity on an uninhabited island just offshore. Before AlTo’s conservation work with these villagers, they had routinely poached turtle meat and eggs whenever they could find them. Now, however, with AlTo’s Awareness Campaign and their new-found concern for turtle conservation, they took canoes to the island to find out what was going on. On the island, they found a man who had captured 26 live green turtles and was preparing to butcher them for market. The villagers protested, informing the man that sea turtles are protected, and citing the Indonesian law as printed at the bottom of AlTo’s sea turtle poster. The man ignored them, noting that he had done this all his life.

But the villagers were undaunted. When the man refused to cooperate, they returned to the mainland and sent a messenger on a motorbike three villages away to find a policeman. The policeman also shrugged off news of the turtle caputre, noting that he too likes to eat turtle. But the villagers again cited the law on the poster, which several of them have displayed in their huts, and demanded that the policeman accompany them to the island and enforce the law. Unable to refuse, the policeman did indeed join them, apprehended the poacher, and the turtles were released. The villagers returned to their village triumphant in their new-found role as turtle protectors—and all this was due to AlTo’s Awareness campaign and the Adobe posters!

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AltoTurtlePosterAdobeContest2009.pdf

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AlToPosterwithGarlandAdobeCOntest09.pdf

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AlToChildrenwithposterAdobeContest09.pdfSubmitted by AlTogals on April 15, 2009 - 4:47pm

Rockymarsh Run Watershed Initiative

Organization Information:

Organization Name

Conservation Fund - Freshwater Institute

Organization's Mission Statement

The Freshwater Institute, a program of the Conservation Fund, works to develop and validate sustainable, environmentally responsible solutions to water resource management.

Organization Website

www.rockymarshrun.org

Submission Information

Impact Essay

Through the Freshwater Institute, the Rockymarsh Run Network is working to connect people to their watershed and their environment. Using Adobe’s Creative Suite, our organization has stepped the effort up a notch to creatively engage the local community. For the past 3 years we have been able to design and print a 12-month calendar for distribution in our watershed located in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. Passing out the calendars to local school children, community leaders, businesses, and residents in the watershed allows our cause to be known and the community to become engaged.

Rockymarsh Run is a small stream that once supported diverse and abundant life. Now, with fewer species to support, it meanders through lands—once dominated by agriculture, as it makes its way to the Potomac River, and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay. Our goal is to help foster the idea of stewardship in the community by highlighting special places that remain in the watershed and by identifying species that one should expect to see in this unique landscape. To this end, the group is attempting, through various partnerships, to reintroduce the native Brook Trout and improve the overall quality of the habitat through restoration activities. This particular stream has microhabitats that make it an ideal candidate for such efforts. But in order to claim success, our group first wants to invoke a passion for sense of place for those in the area who contribute to activities that may influence the quality of our local water resources—which means all of us!

Only through the combined use of Adobe products like Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop could our organization produce such a stunning printed calendar to draw people in and stir their feelings for the landscape and all that it holds. The calendars are created with purpose and meant to inspire community members to act as advocates for the environment around them by identifying topics and actions in the pages to help a homeowner make better choices when it comes to our environment, specifically our freshwater resources. This initial outreach work lays the foundation for future networking and communication with the local landowners and community members for upcoming stages of restoration work.

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2008_Rockymarsh_Calendar.pdfSubmitted by Rockymarsh on April 15, 2009 - 7:03am