To strengthen the identity of the group.
The individual passports, your person carbon footprint, large sheets of paper, pens and about an hour.
You may be an established group that has been working together for ages. Or you may just have come together. You may already have a logo or you may have been thinking about designing one. If you haven’t got one, this activity may help you by drawing out some of your main strengths and what you want other people to know about you.
a) First, start by reminding yourselves about each other’s individual passports. Look back at your person passport and individual Carbon Footprints. Add up how carbon, as a group, you are emitting into the environment. What are other people’s footprints like compared to yours? What are other people doing to help keep their's low? What's the impact of this around where you live?
b) The task now is to create a group passport of key information you want other people to know about you. Remember, this does not have to be the final thing. The main aim of the activity is to help you build up a picture of what you are about, not produce a glossy leaflet – though you might end up doing that later. When you’re creating your group passport, is there a way you want other people to see your group in terms of carbon footprint and sustainability? Do you have any shared goals for this?
Your key information might include:
c) And finally, looking at the information on your group passport and looking at the individual emblems or symbols you have on your individual passports, is there a design or a logo that best represents you as a group? Have a go at creating one. You can do this as a group activity, in small groups or individually and then share your ideas together. The most important thing is that everyone is included and everyone’s ideas are valued. It’s the ideas that are most important, rather than artistic skill. Michael Norton, in his book How to be a community champion, also suggests you might want to add a strap line and slogan. A strap line is a short statement summarising what you are about. A slogan captures your call to action in three to five words.
Before you move on, look at the group passport and logo. Do you feel this represents you properly? Does anyone feel your views or ideas haven’t been included? How similar or different do you think you are to other young people in the area? The group passport and logo may be something you want to come back to in later units, so keep the work safe. At some stage, you may want to use it to make a leaflet about the group, or come back to it and change it as new members join or the group takes a new direction.