A Drop of Ink May Make a Million Think

Read a Free Book and Work for the Future

 — by Margie Doyle —

Joe Symons and Anita Orne have again collaborated to make their fortune and ensure their future. How? By bringing possible solutions for climate change to the stakeholders whom they most believe in: school students, specifically, middle school students.

Anita is the creative expert and Joe Symons the IT genius at Island Stewards, a non-profit dedicated to advancing energy conservation and efficiency. “We believe the best way to save energy, and protect our planet is to lessen energy usage, producing NEGAwatts, not megawatts, they say.  Joe explains negawatts as “the amount of energy units saved through conservation.”

As Joe Symons has looked at energy conservation issues and the mesages of change over the last 40 years, he saw the need for a concise, engaging story. We have to transform our dependence on fossil fuel, he says, and the big energy producers have outdated infrastructure for bringing new solutions.

“We’ve tried engaging the other stakeholders in a meaningful conversation,” Joe says: the electrical utility companies, appliance and automobile manufacturers, the government/public sector. And meanwhile the problem gets worse, with everybody waiting for somebody else to take the first step.”

Joe and Anita see an effective first step in reaching educators with the simple, clear message ofwhat you can do, in their book, A Vote for the Future available online and in pdf form.

Anita wrote the story about a new kid in town who “runs for school president on a platform of energy conservation, and how kids can and must make a difference. Swept up in the excitement of school politics, jerky boys, frustrating teachers and supportive families, the kids share the adventure  of changing their world for the better.”

Right now, this process is in the middle of an indiegogo funding campaign that will enable Island Stewards to send a colorful, high-quality one-page flyer about A Vote for the Future to all middle-school teachers, in about 400 public and 200 private schools, in Washington State. The flyer  announces  A Vote for the Future  as a free tool to bring kids into the  story of how they can join together to save the world. Anita explains that the cost of the flyer and mailing is about $2.50 each, just to make teachers aware of this book for their classes.

Joe explains that the problem all along has been capturing the public’s imagination –“there is no spark, no sex appeal to conservation. The challenge has been to present a message of reality, change and empowerment. How do you tell a new story, with a transformative message that inspires feedback and action?

“Kids’ energy is to grab on to things and be the agent of change in a household,” Joe says, and hence the campaign to get the message out, share the vision and spread the movement. They hope by mailing the flyers they can engage teachers to incorporate the narrative into classroom curriculum. “We know teachers are overloaded, but this book can be a significant means of change.” Beyond that, their vision is to model behavior that adults could follow to do their part in making the world a better place

“We  need a new wedge.” Joe suggests that people consider devoting time and money to stopping and reversing environmental damage instead of investing their resources in a college education  —  “Save the world so it’s worth living post-college,” he says conclusively.

“If kids brought the message of A Vote for the Future to their families, they could be at the forefront of a movement.”

Island Stewards produces books, videos, websites and more for kids and adults to educate and inspire. A Vote for the Future is the fourth book from Island Stewards. The book titles are:

• Inside the Outlet
• Vampire Goggles
• Samantha the SuperSaver
• Only So Big

These books are interactive in the iPad version, andare designed to influence two generations ata time, as parents read the stories with their children. They are all available free online at www.islandstewards.org , and are available as pdf’s for printing out, and on ipads.

Joe says his own “trigger moment” on climate activism came when, as an OPALCO ambassador, he received a mailing that was sent out to all U.S. rural electric cooperatives, advancing a system to capture and “hold” carbon waste produced by coal burning. The mailing advised coop members to write their legislatures in support of such a project. “Something really flipped in me when I read that,” said Joe. “It was so slickly written to enlist the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association members… with a mindset of a totally unsustainable relation to the earth, built around the concept of growth.”

Anita finds it harder to pinpoint her creative activism. She was always an outdoor kid, and worked as a naturalist, artist and musician over the years.

Their website is IslandStewards.org and their Facebook site is online at PlayfulPathsToEnergyFrugality. Information about Island Stewards can be found at the checkout counters at the Orcas Island Food Coop.

(Orcas Issues believes in the Island Stewards Mission to expand the conversation about energy waste and encourage conservation, and so will post a public service announcement linking readers to A Vote for the Future, to download and read and share. Please consider doing this, and letting us know that you, too, want to vote for the future.)