For the annual Earth Day Indiana Festive we solicit the participation of ten environmental groups and ten corporate sponsors. The environmental groups like the local Sierra Club chapter, etc. do in-kind activities like promoting our festival, do a community outreach activity during the months of April or May, put us on their mailing list and so on. The corporate folks fork over either cash ($2500) or in-kind services that carry a big price tag like poster production, radio advertising, etc.
The passport itself looked similar to a regular passport with the inside pages sectioned off for rubber stamps or stickers to be adhered to. The local United Way print shop made the passports. The front and back covers were printed on green paper and had our logo on the front and all of the participating sponsors and the tens in which they were located on the back inside jacket cover. On the inside jacket cover were the instructions.
The passport program encourage children to go to all of the environmental and corporate sponsors information booths at the festival. At each booth the children would get their passport stamped with the logo of the environmental or corporate group and ask a meaningful environmental question about the group's activities. When the children got 16 of the possible 20 validations they returned the passport to the Children's Tent and received a frisbee. The frisbees were given to Earth Day Indiana by the American Plastics Council and the frisbees were made from recycled plastics. Printing the passports was about $100.
The program got the children and their parents to go to the exhibitors booths and guaranteed that our sponsors would get additional foot traffic that they otherwise might not have received. When promoting the festival on various TV and radio community affairs programs the moderators always seemed very interested. We are going to do it again this year. It is a way for the "more boring" exhibitors to interact with the children and their parents and is on additional incentive for the corporate sponsors to make their displays more user friendly and less technical. Both the environmental groups and the corporate sponsors last spring thought it was a great idea.
