Team Beach Workshop

41st International Sea Turtle Symposium 2023

Since its creation in 2020, Team BEACH (BE A CHangemaker) has built a network of projects from around the world that have worked together, shared ideas and resources, and hosted several educational webinars. While many sea turtle conservation organizations implement outreach programs in their communities, not all of them are designed with tangible behavior change goals and evaluation plans. The goal of the Team BEACH workshop at the 41st International Sea Turtle Symposium was to unite sea turtle conservationists and behavior change experts to share best practices and instructional materials and guide attendees through designing an applicable behavior change action plan.

Prior to the workshop at ISTS, we requested real-world community-based conservation issues faced by members of the Team BEACH network that could be addressed through a targeted behavior change campaign. After an introductory presentation in which Team BEACH social scientists Rachel Smith and Kelley Anderson explained how to create a successful outreach campaign with associated evaluation, the ~80 workshop participants formed small groups and brainstormed effective behavior change programs for each of the five case studies. Participants then presented their solutions back to the larger group and held open discussions about each solution with the workshop participants.

By the end of the workshop, attendees had an arsenal of tools from behavior change specialists and learned how to apply those tools to real-life scenarios that sea turtle conservation professionals are facing. Attendees learned new behavior change techniques that they could apply to issues in their communities and they created applicable behavior change campaigns that were returned to the projects that submitted the case studies.

You can download all of the materials presented in this workshop below.

Tools and Resources

Powerpoint Presentation

Contains information on useful behavior change theories, do’s and don’ts when designing behavior change campaigns, and examples of successful campaigns.

Download here