U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
2003 Community Involvement
Conference and Training

July 22-25, 2003 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

NOTE: The due date for proposals for the 2003 Call for Presenters has been extended to January 24, 2003.

Available for download:
Call for Presenters (PDF format)	Application to Present (MS Word format) Application to Present (WP format)

You are invited to respond to this Call for Presenters for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 2003 Community Involvement Conference and Training to be held July 22-25, 2003, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This dynamic conference brings together public participation and community involvement professionals from EPA programs and EPA’s federal, state, tribal, and local partners. By presenting at this conference, you will have the opportunity to share stories and expertise, participate in training, and network with your colleagues from around the country.

Our goal is to provide a diverse and educational program—one that engages participants in a variety of learning and sharing opportunities. Presentations should be interactive, engaging, insightful, and informative. They also should draw on your expertise in public participation, partnerships, and community involvement. Please refer to the Proposal Evaluation Criteria for more details when developing your proposals. Proposals must be received by January 20, 2003.


www.epancic.org

Who Should Respond to this Call for Presenters?

This conference is designed for EPA managers, project staff, and partners who plan and implement EPA’s public participation, partnerships, outreach, education, and community involvement programs. We encourage you to submit a presentation proposal with your federal, state, tribal, and local partners. In addition, we invite you to share this Call for Presenters throughout EPA, and with public involvement professionals in federal, state, tribal, and local governments, universities, citizen groups, not-for-profit organizations, and companies that perform or offer related services.

Conference Schedule and Format

This conference is expected to attract more than 300 participants and will include plenary sessions, concurrent workshops or panel sessions, optional training, and networking opportunities. Concurrent sessions are either 60, 90, or 120 minutes in length and will be presented over two and a half days (beginning on Tuesday morning, July 22, and concluding at noon on Thursday, July 24). The training sessions can be either four or eight hours and will be offered over a two-day period (beginning the afternoon of July 24 and concluding by noon on July 25). The conference also will include several keynote presentations, evening social activities, site visits, field trips, and poster sessions.

Presentation Types

Case Study: Discuss community involvement challenges or hot issues and explain how a program was designed and implemented in response to the challenge or issue. Share results, pitfalls, successes, and lessons learned from the experiences of EPA and other agencies implementing public education and community involvement programs. Provide examples of processes that participants can transfer to their projects to better serve communities.

Discussion: Facilitate an interactive discussion about a hot issue or opportunity within the field of community involvement and public outreach and education. Encourage participants to share their experiences and exchange ideas on a particular issue, challenge, trend, or opportunity concerned with community involvement, outreach, or education within the area of environmental protection.

Panel: Invite and assemble a panel of field personnel and/or community members to share their experiences and ideas about what is happening in a particular area of public participation, partnering, education, outreach, or community involvement.

Skills Development: Educate and train your peers in a community involvement, public outreach, or education tool or approach that you have used successfully. Provide specific examples of how the tool or approach has been used in the field. Explore new environmental and information technologies.

Field Trips/Site Visits: Demonstrate the results of a public participation or outreach effort by transporting participants to a major environmental site where specific community involvement and public participation activities are occurring. Show how public participation has impacted the community through site visits that also encourage participants to share their own ideas and experiences. Use the site visit to showcase an innovative environmental project that involves the community.

Training Session: Train your peers on a particular skill useful in public outreach or community involvement.

Other: Propose any other type of presentation that will enrich others regarding public participation, public accessibility to information, partnerships, education and outreach, and emerging trends or issues in community involvement.

Please note that participants also can propose a topic for the conference’s open time sessions, which are one-hour sessions held during the conference. Open time topics are proposed during the conference’s plenary sessions. The person proposing the topic must host their suggested open time session. Participants also can display posters and exhibits in the conference exhibit room. The conference also may include a formal poster session to allow exhibitors to talk with participants. It is not necessary to submit a written proposal for an open time session or to display posters and exhibits.

Session Topics

The following are examples of presentation or training topics you may want to propose. You may submit a proposal that addresses one of these topic areas or a topic of your own choosing.

Encouraging and Integrating Public Input into Environmental Decisions: Present a session on techniques for involving the public as stakeholders and partners in environmental issues and decisions. Possible topics include community involvement efforts to support regulations and compliance/enforcement efforts; technical assistance programs for communities; how to facilitate conversations between technical experts and the public while engendering mutual respect for opinions and experiences; the role of community involvement in redevelopment/smart growth/reuse programs and initiatives; and methods to encourage the public to participate in environmental issues and discussions.

Public Education and Outreach: Sponsor a session that focuses on specific education and outreach efforts and initiatives. Suggested topics include environmental education programs and technologies; methods for targeting public education and outreach programs for specific audiences; impact of electronic media on public outreach; community assessment techniques; and the impact of public outreach on behavior change and risk reduction.

Environmental Justice and Cross-Cultural Communication: Consider developing a session to present the unique opportunities and challenges associated with communicating or collaborating with environmental justice and ethnic communities. Potential topics are cross-cultural considerations for community involvement and public outreach efforts; strategic planning for working with disenfranchised and ethnic communities; methods for identifying, working with, and empowering environmental justice and ethnic communities; and approaches for developing outreach and public participation programs that reach across multiple cultural and ethnic groups.

Partnering/Collaborating to Design and Implement Projects: Offer a session focusing on partnering and collaboration between regulatory agencies and the public, for inter- and intra-agency efforts, or for multi-media initiatives. Possible topics are building effective networks for outreach and public participation; finding partners, resources, and funding to implement community involvement activities; cross-program/agency collaboration and cooperation when designing and implementing community involvement and public outreach/education projects; the role of community involvement in multi-media initiatives; and examples of public–private partnerships for outreach, education, and community involvement.

Community Involvement/Public Outreach Tools, Techniques, and Tips: Describe a specific community involvement or public outreach/education tool, technology, approach, or activity. Topics include the entire range of outreach and community involvement tools or techniques, such as risk communication; media relations; community involvement/public education tips and successes; methods for defining and measuring the success of community involvement and public education programs; innovative community involvement and outreach approaches; working with community members who are impacted by environmental damage in their community; and how to design and implement collaborative processes.

Other: Offer a presentation on a topic that addresses a hot issue or current trend in environmental community involvement, public education and outreach, and information access that is not captured by the topic areas described above.

Proposal Evaluation Criteria

Proposals must be submitted in writing and conform to the proposal instructions (note that proposal abstracts can be no more than one page in length). Proposals will be evaluated on all of the following criteria:

The proposal is well-written and the goals are clearly specified and achievable for the length of the session.
The proposed topic contributes to EPA’s commitment to finding ways to foster and encourage community involvement, partnerships, outreach, and/or education.
The proposed topic tackles emerging community involvement/outreach challenges or addresses current challenges in an innovative way.

For training proposals, one additional criterion will be used:

The proposed topic uses presentation tools to actively engage the audience.

How to Submit a Proposal

Proposals are due by the close of business on Monday, January 20, 2003. Late proposals will not be accepted or considered. To submit a proposal, please type your responses to the following twelve items (only typed proposals will be accepted):

What is the title of your proposed presentation?

What type of presentation are you proposing (check no more than two)?

___ Case Study ___ Discussion ___ Panel ___ Skills Development

___ Field Trip/Site Visit ___ Training ___ Other (Please explain)

How long is your proposed presentation? Please choose only one of the following:

Concurrent Sessions: ___ 1 hr ___ 1 1/2 hours ___ 2 hours

Training Sessions: ___ 4 hours ___ 8 hours

Field Trips: ___ hours (Please provide the time needed, not to exceed three hours)

Please indicate the appropriate audience for your presentation by selecting one of the following:

___ For entry level professionals ___ For professionals with three to six years of experience

___ For experienced professionals (more than six years)

Please indicate the topic area of your presentation by choosing one of the following:

___ Encouraging and Integrating Public Input into Environmental Decisions

___ Public Education and Outreach

___ Environmental Justice and Cross-Cultural Communication

___ Partnering/Collaborating to Design and Implement Projects

___ Community Involvement/Public Outreach Tools, Techniques, and Tips

___ Other: ___________________________________________________________________

What is the name of the Main Contact/Lead Presenter (must be the same person) for this presentation?
Who are the presenters for this presentation?

Please provide full information for the lead presenter (list first) and ALL co-presenters who will be involved in this presentation. All correspondence will be addressed to the Lead Presenter, but all presenters/panel members will be copied on all correspondence (note that it is the Lead Presenter’s responsibility to notify conference organizers of any changes to the presenters/panelists).

Name: (Mr./Ms./Mrs./Dr.): _____________________________________________________________

Professional Title: ___________________________________________________________________

Address: ______________________________________________________________________________

City: ______________________ State: ______________________ Zip: _______________________

Phone: _____________________________________ Fax: _____________________________________

Email: ________________________________________________________________________________
Using the proposal criteria as a guide, describe your session. Please limit your description to ONE PAGE (please use one-inch margins and a 12-point font). Note that any part of the description longer than one page will not be read by the proposal reviewers, including attachments.

What audiovisual equipment will you require for your presentation?

Note: Computers with PowerPoint viewer software and LCD projectors will be provided for all sessions. Presenters are expected to use this equipment to show all of their presentation materials. If needed and requested by May 15, 2003, support will be provided to presenters to convert their materials to the PowerPoint format. Conference organizers are planning to produce and distribute presentation proceedings in electronic distribution formats. All final electronic presentation materials must be submitted by June 20, 2003.

___ Flip Chart (How Many? ___) ___ VCR ___ DVD Player

___ Other _______ (Requests for additional equipment will be considered on an individual basis.)

Note: Information contained on a flip chart, videotape, DVD, or other media will not be recorded and will not be included in the conference proceedings.

Travel reimbursement request (For non-federal government presenters only)

Note: Limited funding may be available to reimburse the travel-related expenses for some expert speakers (non-federal government presenters only). However, these expert speakers must arrange and pay for all their travel-related expenses up front and will be reimbursed for these expenses after the conference.

Will you or any of your co-presenters require reimbursement of travel expenses to present at the conference?

___ Yes ___ No

If yes, which presenters listed above will require reimbursement (not to exceed two presenters)?

Will you still be able to give this presentation at the conference if no travel reimbursement is available for the presenters listed above?

___ Yes, we will be able to give this presentation without reimbursement of travel-related expenses for our presenters.

No, we will not be able to give this presentation unless one of our presenters is reimbursed for their travel.

No, we will not be able to give this presentation unless two of our presenters are reimbursed for their travel.
Add the following statement to the end of your proposal:

“With the submission of this proposal, I acknowledge that EPA reserves the right to record any portion of my presentation for later reproduction and distribution to conference participants. I shall provide to conference organizers a written summary of my presentation (to be included in the conference booklet containing presentation abstracts) and copies of presentation materials in an electronic format, for inclusion on the conference proceedings CD.”

Sign and date your proposal, and submit your answers via mail, fax, or e-mail by close of business on Monday, January 20, 2003 to:

(Note: We encourage you to submit your proposal application by e-mail, either in WordPerfect or Microsoft Word. A WordPerfect or Microsoft Word file containing these questions may be obtained from the conference website at www.epancic.org or by contacting our conference coordinator, Environmental Management Support (EMS), by phone at 301-589-5318 or by e-mail at ciconference@emsus.com.)

CI Conference Coordinator
Environmental Management Support, Inc.
8601 Georgia Avenue, Suite 500
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Phone: 301-589-5318
Fax: 301-589-8487
E-mail: ciconference@emsus.com

Notification of Acceptance

All applicants will be notified by March 10, 2003, whether their proposal has been selected.

Questions

For more information, contact either:

Community Involvement Conference Coordinator
Environmental Management Support
8601 Georgia Avenue, Suite 500
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Phone: 301-589-5318
Fax: 301-589-8487
E-mail: ciconference@emsus.com

Chris Tirpak, 2003 EPA Conference Co-Chair
Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances (7101M)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20460
Phone: 202-564-0546
Fax: 202-564-0540
E-mail: tirpak.chris@epa.gov

Pat Carey, 2003 EPA Conference Co-Chair
Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (5204G)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20460
Phone: 703-603-8772
Fax: 703-603-9100
E-mail: carey.pat@epa.gov