Are Free Printed Educational Materials Really Needed in Engaging Underserved Communities?

We’ll explore the consequences of changing the model of a successful citizen science project designed to engage underserved urban audiences. Celebrate Urban Birds (CUBs) is a citizen science project from the Cornell Lab of... [ view full abstract ]

We’ll explore the consequences of changing the model of a successful citizen science project designed to engage underserved urban audiences. Celebrate Urban Birds (CUBs) is a citizen science project from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that successfully engages and involves urban underserved communities in science, the appreciation of birds, and conservation. So far, CUBs has engaged over 10,000 organizations (88+% reaching underserved communities) and more than 300,000 participants across North America. The project is bilingual, delivered in Spanish and English, and has earned widespread recognition for its innovative approaches to reaching audiences not traditionally represented in science. The project was co-created with input from urban Latino communities and is based on research to develop novel models for bringing meaningful and relevant participatory science to Latino communities in placed-at-risk neighborhoods.

Until January of 2014 the project model consisted of co-creating community celebrations focused on birds, greening, and the arts; free materials for participating organizations; mini-grants; and capacity building. Since 2007 CUBs had impressive success in engaging new audiences from underserved communities. Due to temporary funding constraints, starting in January 2014 CUBs changed its model to reach underserved communities. The most radical change was to no longer provide free educational materials. As of January 2014 organizations had to request a scholarship to receive free educational kits or they could download them from the website. The impact of this modification in the outreach model transformed the number of participants and organizations registering for the project and the demographics of new registrants.

We carefully looked at the consequences of the change in implementation and will discuss the results of our study. The value of free, printed educational materials in the successful inclusion of underserved communities in citizen science may be much greater than we imagined.