Developing a Volunteer Program for Public Environmental Education.

Volunteers can serve as a means to educate the public about environmental issues and increase stewardship ethic. This booklet is designed to provide much of the key information about designing and managing environmental volunteer programs to educate the general public. The booklet is based on the experiences of a volunteer program called Island County Washington State University Beach Watchers. The booklet is organized into nine sections that describe: (1) an overview of the program; (2) the program's purpose; (3) why using volunteers makes sense; (4) the makeup of the advisory board; (5) how to promote the program; (6) recruiting volunteers; (7) training volunteers; (8) supporting trained volunteers; and (9) evaluating the program. The section on training the volunteers includes information about set-up, locations, design, finding instructors, group size, scheduling, training materials, training volunteers as monitors, field experiences, testing, and graduation. The appendix contains a timeline for the program, instructor guidelines, resource book topics, a pretest and posttest, a sample volunteer request form, a copy of the lifestyle change survey, volunteer activity examples, a volunteer time sheet, one volunteer's personal narrative describing his and his wife's experience, and a list of goals. (MDH)