I wanted to write about this week’s phone call session because it turned out to be especially successful.  We called our standard politicians and left messages as usual, but on this day, we decided to go outside of Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester County and decided to call Ed Falco who is a consultant for the State Department of Education.  Unbeknownst to us, he was actually made director of the South Carolina Environmental Education Program.  After speaking to him on the phone, we realized that the same programs LEEP is trying to enact are the same programs Ed Falco is trying to enact for the state of South Carolina.  Since the beginning of the year, LEEP has been trying to form a coalition of environmentally conscious businesses and organizations to more efficiently get their outreach programs to students.  Ian saw that if there was a way to unite all parties autonomously, it would allow for a more organized way of bringing these different organizations into the schools to speak and educate the students.  Ed Falco wants to do the same thing except on a grander scale.  He wants to have a collaboration of different non profits from different areas to be responsible for their own regions to ensure that the curriculum and teaching methods are up to standards.  He also wants to improve the environmental literacy of students and the teachers.  Ed Falco believes non-profits could be a vital resource in training teachers on how to better present information to the students.  Ian jumped on this chance and said LEEP would be very interested in being a contact for one of these regions.  Mr. Falco likewise wants to create an online database for South Carolina non-profits so that they are easily searchable.  Here are some links I found online about what Ed Falco is trying to accomplish for the school system here in South Carolina:

http://www.independentmail.com/news/2008/oct/28/whole-new-world-williamston-school-launches-educat/

http://www.statehousereport.com/columns/07.0408.nature.htm