iEARN: "(OF)2: Our Footprints, Our Future"

I had a wonderful meeting with Dr. Edwin Gragert, Executive Director of iEARN-USA (International Education and Resource Network), on Friday about ways that CarbonGage.org and iEARN can partner together to help reduce our overall carbon footprint through education. iEARN is a non-profit organization made up of over 20,000 schools and youth organizations in more than 115 countries. The organization empowers teachers and young people to work together online using the Internet and other new communications technologies. Each day, over 1,000,000 students are engaged in collaborative projects worldwide. Since 1988, iEARN has pioneered on-line school linkages to enable students to engage in meaningful educational projects with peers in their countries and around the world.

While CarbonGage.org is initially focusing on educating "bill payers" in the United States about their actual energy usage, it eventually hopes to foster international education at all levels to help with total energy reduction. This means working with unique organizations like iEARN to educate people at an early age. iEARN is currently gearing up to launch a new campaign: "(OF)2: Our Footprints, Our Future." Through (OF)2, young people around the world will use on-line tools to measure their current carbon footprint to develop strategies for reducing their carbon usage. The goal is for one million students around the world to join together with their families, their schools, and their communities to reduce the total global carbon footprint!

I have had a sneak peek at (OF)2 and I have to say that it will accomplish a great deal towards reducing our global carbon footprint through environmental education (at the k-12 level). iEARN is able to transcend geographical and language barriers and set up unique challenges and tracking systems that should serve to simultaneously educate and foster an immediate carbon reduction. The campaign will be a great success - at CarbonGage, we are looking forward to working more closely with iEARN on energy reduction campaigns in the future.