Purpose of Initiative
My Community, Our Earth: Geographic Learning for Sustainable Development (MyCOE) [www.geography.org/sustainable] provides middle and secondary school, and college and university students around the world with a new set of geographic tools to learn about current economic, social and environmental challenges in their communities, and involve them in finding solutions to these challenges within their neighborhoods, villages, cities, and countries. MyCOE is a public/private education partnership led by the Association of American Geographers to address sustainable development issues including: biodiversity, climate change, deforestation, environmental pollution, food production, fresh water supply, health and disease, mountain development, poverty reduction, rural development, and urbanization.

MyCOE raises international awareness about the importance of geography and geographic information system (GIS) technology, especially satellite images, in addressing issues relating to sustainable development. Project themes emphasize Agenda 21 topics; current UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) Themes of Water, Sanitation, and Human Settlement; the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); and the implementation of the UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development. The project offers the opportunity for students to post their projects in the MyCOE Project Gallery. Using this site, students may post additional projects at any time. Submitted projects may also receive prizes, recognition and/or display at major national and international venues.

In addition, MyCOE launched a regional initiative in the US states that border the Gulf of Mexico and the Greater Caribbean, to serve as a working model, to provide more dedicated support to selected youth during the course of their project work, to elicit greater impact on participants and communities with limited resources available, and to build linkages with the White Water to Blue Water Partnership. Through this regional initiative, MyCOE is providing the opportunity for a limited number of university students to work with local community projects using geographic tools and concepts for sustainable development. Students will gain critical workforce and educational experiences through their 4 to 6 month programs at sites in Puerto Rico, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, and US states that border the Gulf of Mexico. Linkages among the distributed project universities, community organizations, and governmental agencies include online e-communities to support peer-to-peer networking, mentoring relationships, university-to-university connections, and inter-institutional/multisectoral linkages. The youth receive modest stipends and administrative support and are expected to provide regular reports, posters, evaluations, and other information about their experiences to MyCOE. Project activities at individual sites have been developed in conjunction with local host organizations, local community groups, and the MyCOE program, as described online in regular updates. Activities focus on using geography/GIS for sustainable development themes, in particular watershed/natural resource management, planning or education in both urban and rural settings.

Other regional initiatives and targeted activities are currently in discussion and design with partners and potential supporters, including development of funding proposals.

Phase 1 (2002-2003):

• Build the project management website, form a steering committee, assemble resource materials, and market project before January 2002;
• Register thousands of students (international and domestic) by marketing through the partner organizations and send resource kits to prepare for the May 2002 submission deadline;
• Recruit mentors (hundreds) to assist international and domestic students (hundreds) to prepare for May 2002 submission deadline;
• Engage a high-level panel to review student projects by June 2002 in time to create 10 student exhibits for World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August 2002; and
• Post projects on the MyCOE website and exhibit them at other national and international venues.

Phase 2 (2003-2004):

• Register domestic and international students with topic-specific projects that align with the partner missions and recruit additional mentors to assist students;
• Supplement existing resources to address the national geography education standards and provide them electronically through the web-site;
• Offer developmentally appropriate resources for middle school students as well as high-school and college students;
• Maintain the web-based project assistance site especially for connecting mentors with students;
• Strengthen the university-to-university linkages, sister-city concept, and connections to other WSSD partnerships such as White Water to Blue Water (WW2BW); Geographic Information for Sustainable Development (GISD), and LandCare;
• Translate primary outreach material into other languages;
• Awards and project presentations will be given at the National 4-H Technology Conference in St. Louis, Missouri (July 2004); and
• Produce documentary videos.  

Ongoing (2005-current): Targets defined for ongoing activities include:

• Providing ongoing registration of domestic and international students with topic-specific projects that align with the partner missions and recruit additional mentors to assist students;
• Supplementing existing resources to address the national geography education standards and provide them electronically through the web-site;
• Offering developmentally appropriate resources for middle school students as well as high-school and college students;
• Maintaining the web-based project assistance site especially for connecting mentors with students;
• Strengthening the university-to-university linkages, sister-city concept, and connections to other WSSD partnerships such as White Water to Blue Water (WW2BW); Geographic Information for Sustainable Development (GISD), and LandCare;
• Translating primary outreach material into other languages; and
• Launching a Regional Initiative in U.S. states that border the Gulf of Mexico as well as in the Greater Caribbean Region.

Progress Toward Targets

Phase I (2002-2003): By the end of Phase 1, the first round of student projects had been submitted, reviewed, and displayed in a variety of venues. Specifically:

• The partnership recruited the first round of student projects and project mentors between February and June 2002;
• Several resource guides and a cadre of 517 volunteer mentor experts from 63 countries were available to support student projects;
• 2,091 resource kits were sent to 103 countries;
• Students submitted over 200 projects from 27 countries;
• A high-level review panel selected 10 MyCOE projects that were displayed at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in August 2002;
• Student projects were displayed at the: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) e-Governance program in Milan (March 2003); USDA GIS Day in Washington, DC (November 2002); the National Council for Science and the Environment in Washington, DC (January 2003); ESRI Federal Users Conference (February 2003); AAG Annual Meeting in New Orleans (March 2003); the UN CSD-11 in New York (April 2003); and ESRI Users Conference in San Diego (July 2003).

BACK TO ALL INITIATIVES