Plant Pioneers

Inspiration

Borderlands Restoration Network has always been at the forefront of sustainability practices. However, with recent federal funding challenges, our mission was to help them find innovative ways to keep their important work alive and thriving. Because of gaps in their current audience engagement, we decided to diversify the audience, and focus on children under 16 as well as their parents as our target population.

What it does

Plant Pioneers, a sister program to BECY, aims to provide a space for children 6-15 to learn how to garden native plants, and how to make seed bombs through after-school and summer programs. With the child's support system, their parents, siblings, other family and friends, our hope is that this solution helps to maximize community engagement and exposure to BRN, to hopefully bring in more funding in the future. And possibly lead these new generation of leaders into a lifetime centered around sustainability and restoration practices.

How we built it

We brainstormed a lot of ideas, but with consideration to the target audience and the potential impact of this solution, we eventually decided on a service-design-centered solution. This Plant Pioneers project targets future sustainable leaders with the hopes of continuing the mission and work of Borderlands Restoration Network.

Challenges we ran into

With a service design concept, we struggled to figure out what deliverables to show for the complex ideas we had. In the same realm, at times we struggled to narrow the scope, especially with the passion that comes with this cause. With the time restrictions, this made it difficult to flesh out our solution in high detail, especially when there were so many great ideas.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Finding opportunity due to a gap in the audience that helped us formulate a lot of great ideas. In the end, we are really proud of the solution we decided on and are excited about the potential impact it can have on not just the community, but BRN's mission.

What we learned

We learned how to communicate complex ideas with each other, taking note of each of our strengths and skillsets, which ultimately helped challenge all of us to grow. Looking forward to the future of our careers, and hopefully working together again.

What's next for Plant Pioneers

For Plant Pioneers, we hope to see the implementation of the new program at Borderlands to initially gain community engagement. With the potential success of the program, there are many scale up opportunities to expand into local scout programs, collaboration with museums and libraries, and offerings in Spanish and other languages.

Built With

• figma