It’s not often that we get the chance or time to work on a passion project. However, I recently created a project proposal for a topic I am extremely passionate about: climate change and its effect on winter sports. As someone who lives on the east coast, I enjoy the winter months by skiing but have noticed that our winters and climate in general have been changing, leading me to take a deep dive into why this is happening and if there is anything we can do about it. For the project, I plan to create an Instagram page with followers from the ski and snowboard community who all care about the mountains as much as they care about their winter sports.

Of course, starting the project means starting with research. I compiled thirty sources in a variety of mediums to read and study from. I broke my research down into three areas: the details of climate change, climate change seen in mountains and ways we can help in slowing down climate change. Within these three areas, the post which I share will flow nicely to educate followers, relate the topic to their hobby and to provide ways we can all help the earth. In addition to posting information on climate change, I also want to interview fellow skiers and talk about the changes we have been noticing and ask them how they plan to combat these terrible changes we are seeing our planet go through.  

I first had to refresh my memory on climate change and all the weather changes we have been experiencing for years. But because this is an ever-evolving topic, I quickly found a lot of recent articles and annual reports on the topic. I must admit thought, some of the information I learned was extremely frighting, because frankly not enough people think they themselves can do anything about it! Not only is the global temperature increasing steadily, but because the ice caps are melting the sea level is rising, which means erosion and flooding in our cities. After learning about natural disasters, I knew this topic was important and needed a platform to educate people.

Once the research was complete, I started crafting the project proposal. I already had a visual in my head of what this was going to look like and how I was going to organize it. For the next few days, I outlined the goals and objectives, the target audience for this Instagram page, and created a detailed list of content I would post. Thinking about how I would share this information, I landed on creating Info-graphics and video posts for the platform. I find info-graphics to be a great way to convey content heavy information to others. It tends to be more visually stimulated and appealing for people who may be scrolling or quickly browsing on their phone. Since climate change articles can be heavily worded, I believe this to be a great take on all the data I will be reading through. For the video posts I plan to create short videos which can be similar in style but have some animation and music to it. I want to keep each post focusing on a specific topic within climate change but also to make sure it’s different enough that my followers continue to learn. Third type of post I plan to create will be a Q&A interview with fellow skiers or riders. We will be talking about climate changes they have witnessed firsthand and how they plan to combat it.

As always, jumping into a project like this can be over whelming at first, but after organizing the proposal into a cohesive plan, I am excited to get started! I know one of the most important aspects of this project will be to create exciting, engaging posts my followers will want to interact with. With that being said, I believe if done properly, I know I could gain a lot of engagement from this community.