Designing a Green Living Program (GLP)
The Harvard Green Campus Initiative's GLP is a year-round, peer-to-peer environmental education program. Its funding partners support a permanent staff person who coordinates a team of paid part-time student GLP representatives, or "reps." This model works particularly well in Harvard's undergraduate residence halls, which have dining halls, common rooms and other active centers for student interaction.
Purpose
A GLP is based on the acknowledgement of the current ecological crisis and belief in the university's ability to address it by influencing the behavior of its students, faculty, staff and alumni. The specific purpose of a GLP is to create collaboration among students and administrators in the establishment of a dorm-based, environmental peer education program. A GLP also provides a way for students to teach other students how to conserve resources and communicate directly with campus decision-makers about environmental issues.
While your goals will be unique to your campus setting, the objectives of a GLP may include the following:
- strategic coordination between student leaders and operations staff
- utilization of administrative partners to maximize reps’ effectiveness
- awareness on the part of student service providers, such as administrators and deans, about barriers to student conservation
- institutional memory
- reduced campus environmental impacts
- reduced resource consumption, particularly in residence halls
- increased recycling
- decreased refuse
- evaluation of initiatives and financial savings
- active mentoring of students
- development of student leaders
- environmental sustainability education
- creation of a norm of environmentally aware behavior
- making environmentally preferred behaviors convenient and natural parts of everyday life
- increased awareness of upstream and downstream effects of one's choices
When designing a GLP for your campus, it is important to consider your audience, partners and context.