Earth Day is April 22! Do you have an event planned to celebrate? Here are six tips for an awesome project:

• Be sure to explain the impact of the project. Whether you’ve got a project planned to pick up litter in a park, plant trees in your community, or transplanting native grasses to help reduce sand dune migration, take the time to explain the impact of the project. It will help volunteers understand that the work that they’re doing has an impact outside of the work they’ve done that day.
• Involve everyone. Try to involve as many people as you can in the project. While children might not be able to move a six foot tree that you’re planning on planting, there are things that they can be involved in that help to support bigger jobs. Someone needs to water the tree after it’s been planted, after all!
• Remember that ‘environment’ doesn’t have to mean ‘global.’ Tree plantings, park clean ups, and painting drain covers that lead to larger waterways fit into the big picture of environmental preservation, but these projects have a large local impact, too. Projects that celebrate Earth Day don’t have to have a global impact—projects with a local impact are great projects for Earth Day.
• Education is as important as action. Earth Day started as a way to bring people together to share information about environmental issues that they cared about and has grown into a day of action and education. Sharing information about how others can help to preserve and improve the environment is as important as acting to preserve the environment.
• Make sure your volunteers know they might get dirty. If your project involves cleaning and planting, make sure your volunteers know that they might get dirty. Provide them with gloves or ask them to bring their own, and try to give them a way to clean up after the project.
• Make Earth Day every day. Don’t forget about volunteer projects that have an environmental impact next week because it isn’t Earth Day anymore. If you can, offer multiple projects throughout the year that focus on improving the environment.

Have a great Earth Day! We’d love to hear about the projects that you have planned, let us know in the comments!