OL 241 Assignment Two Homework
Online Learning. OL 241 How to Write a Community Climate Action Plan
https://training.csd-i.org/how-to-write-your-climate-action-plan/
Center for Sustainable Development: https://training.csd-i.org/

This week’s resources:
Assignment Two Discussion
Magee Example Project OL 21 Assignment 2
Programs and Activities Developed as Solutions to Community Climate Challenges. Word Document

Helpful Hint: Wilcox community members have described challenges that will develop into a reasonably large, complex project. It may involve not only city government, but state and federal agencies too.

If however, your community members describe a simpler project,  please download this document. There you will find simpler, less complex projects that will be easy for you to use as a template for your project outline. I used it for my programs in my Assignment 2 example.
Programs and Activities Developed as Solutions to Community Climate Challenges. Word Document

Assignment Two. What’s your theory of a solution?
Developing a theory of how we plan to address the problem statement and project outline developed in week one.

Part 1.
Searching for project activities; a list of colleagues and websites that you consulted for potential activities.
Make a list of your community identified problems that you chose for your simple project outline in Assignment One with enough space beneath each one to write down ideas for potential solutions in the form of techniques and activities.

Approach colleagues in your office, tap your own experience, and explore the Internet for ideas for solutions for addressing the causes of your project’s problem statement.

Briefly list who you spoke with, what activity ideas they may have had, and what resources they may have offered your or suggested to you.

Make a list of the best 2 or 3 solution-oriented activity ideas that you discovered for each one of your outline problems—just as I’ve done in my Assignment Two example.

Part 2. The Activity Solution List
After you have collected a list of appropriate activities, make a decision about a title for a program that would describe related activities. Each program should address one underlying cause from week one. When added together, the related activities should add up to equal the program’s intent.

Now list the related activities beneath the Program title like an outline. In order to keep your course project simple, try and limit yourself to a few activities per problem/underlying cause. Donors prefer simple projects. After the last course, two students were asked by donors to simplify their programs because they were too complicated.

You can see examples of completed program ideas developed by other students. You can simply copy and paste into your assignment and modify as needed here:
Programs and Activities Developed as Solutions to Community Climate Challenges. Word Document

So you should have an outline with this format:

Project Outline: Problem list combined with potential Programs and activities/solutions that I chose
[Problem 1]. Diminishing agricultural and city water
Groundwater Recharge Program [Solution to underlying causes: Climate related droughts and heavy runoff not recharging groundwater]:
[Activity 1]. Survey with community members to identify their knowledge of local water use, and challenges and solutions they see.

[Activity 2]. Identify and Consult with a hydraulic engineer with groundwater recharging experience to help develop the scope of the project.

Use the Magee Example Project Assignment Two as your template to reorganize last week’s project outline to include your proposed activities so that it matches the outline in my example. Simply type right over my example and make it your own.

Notice that I cut and pasted the Problem Statement from Assignment One. I have annotated the Problem Statement, the project outline, and the goal statement so that you can see how they interrelate and that they are all parallel to each other. Please do the same with yours. They should all be equal and parallel. It will become obvious how important this is in the coming weeks. Keep the formatting exactly the same as in my example complete with red annotations.

Go to Magee’s Example Project Week 2 to see what this could look like.

Part 3. Goal Statement
If your problem statement is clear, concise, and simple, you will have a much easier time developing your goal statement. Your project’s goal statement will be phrased to be a positive reflection of your problem statement (somewhat like mirror images of each other) and at the same time offer a general strategy for a solution (your theory of change).

Simply copy and paste your problem statement below your project outline—and without changing it structurally—make the negative statements positive. This isn’t the introduction to a proposal, so it needs to be left clean and simple and an exact, parallel reflection of the problem statement.

For example, if one of your problems says that “ businesses suffer from reduced tourism dollars,” then your goal statement might say:

• businesses enjoy renewed tourism dollars

Then after that positive statement include one of your proposed solutions such as:

• through a Street Tree Program to reduce urban heat

Please note: Over the next 10 weeks we will be using techniques to expand upon the theory that you come up with this week, and we will be revisiting your problem statement, goal statement and activities as points of reference. We will lock in on this week’s Project Outline as the FINAL version to be used over the next 10 weeks.

I will make suggestions to this assignment’s Problem Statement, Goal Statement and Project Outline that will help orient them for the weeks ahead and so that they will agree with donor standards and with contemporary management techniques. The comments will also make upcoming assignments easier to complete. If you feel that my comments this week aren’t a good fit for your project – please point this out to me. Otherwise, I will assume that my comments will have been incorporated by you and that our combined effort represents the final Problem Statement, Goal Statement and Project Outline that will be used intact over the next 10 weeks.

The homework to turn in will be:
1. A list of colleagues and websites that you consulted for potential activities.
2. A short list of the solution oriented activities that you discovered.
3. A revised project outline that includes the potential programs and solution oriented activities that you have chosen (As shown in my example. You can just copy and paste your new ideas right over my example.).
4. Your goal statement.

Go to Magee’s Example Project Assignment Two to see what this could look like.

See you next week.