Amplifying Your Message: Lessons from the Worldwide Climate & Justice Education Week
An Interview with David Blockstein
by Melissa Everett, Ph.D., Executive Director
April 16, 2025
David Blockstein, Ph.D., Co-Director of Solve Climate Change by 2030, a project of Bard College.
Every year, Bard’s Solve Climate 2030 project produces Worldwide Climate & Justice Education Week at the beginning of April, a springboard for education and action throughout Earth Month. Being international, this event relies heavily on online promotion; but over the years, lead promoter project co-director David Blockstein has built a real online community and developed a strategy for amplifying the message beyond the events themselves. We caught up with Dr. Blockstein and asked him what he had learned about virtual event promotion and online community building that might be useful for other campaign organizers.
Q. So how did you conceive of this educational week - why a week, what possessed you to make it worldwide and how did you begin to build up the network to implement such a thing?
A. This goes back to Eban Goodstein, Director of Bard’s graduate programs in sustainability, thinking even before Bard, when he was at Lewis and Clark College. Back in 2009 he came up with an event called Focus the Nation on climate change; I’ve been working with him even earlier through the National Council for Science and the Environment. We’ve continued to connect the academic community of educators with solutions and bring greater focus on climate issues nationwide, initially using statewide dialogues that would give rise to solutions ideas focused on each state. These dialogues were scheduled for March 2021 - just after everything got shut down for Covid, but as online webinars, they still went on. Over six years, we have expanded our focus geographically and in time, to be a sustained worldwide platform. Bard was part of the Open Society University Network (OSUN), which provided initial connections with three dozen colleges and universities around the world. This has all become part of a coordinated model, where we identify a time and say. “ Join us at this time, and take these kinds of action.” You feel community, you build marketing and branding.
Q. You seem to use a variety of online tools to implement this vision: advanced email messaging, a LinkedIn group, online and hybrid events, sharing recordings of the events, a map of where the events have been held… How would you describe the playbook for building participation and what makes it successful?
A. My playbook for organizing is pretty simple. Start with the Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). Reach out to the early adopters who will endorse, share the idea and their names by forming an advisory committee. Followup, followup, followup, lots of networking. The online tools are essential for an international effort, and they have to be used wisely – for example, online communication across time zones needs to be factored into scheduling. Amplifying the message across channels has evolved as we add things like a map of participating institutions, which motivates people. Our action network has nearly 5,000 people around the world that we email to, and every listserv we can identify.
Q. Do you see any pattern in who has participated and who has been reached?
A. I think it has changed over time. I appreciate how much we have expanded and sustained our relationships in Africa. We were fortunate in getting a two-year grant with the University of Waterloo in Canada, to provide micro-grants to NGOs and others in Africa who could then organize their own events. Things like that have helped move us out of purely higher education into partnership with NGOs and small organizations, teachers that we would not have reached except by networking. We also made the conscious decision to focus on #MakeClimateaClass (as opposed to separate events) because it reaches people who are not already interested in climate issues.
Q. How has this annual event built up participation since it began?
A. Each year I feel like we are starting afresh, but with some base. We have expanded each year. We’re trying for it to go viral, but in fact it has been a steady expansion to more than 600 classes and events in more than 50 countries this year.
Q. What are some examples of this education leading to action - or even action-based / hands-on learning?
A. At a school in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya last year, we had supported a couple of NGO employees who organized a week-long series of climate change education and action events including tree planting, and information about solar cooking and collectors and sanitation. They involved the young people as well as the governing body of the refugee camp. These people had literally nothing, they were making no contribution to climate change; they are refugees in part because of climate change, and yet there they are educating their community and recognizing it that sustainable practices can improve the lives in their community. That’s incredibly moving.