It's an uncertain time for science, and it's on us as scientists to do something. We face a trust crisis and a crisis of digital isolation into inaccurate narratives. It's easy to feel overwhelmed, or as though we can't make the changes we want to see in the world. And perhaps we can't make changes nationally right now, but we definitely can locally. A vital part of building trust is getting people to connect and engage with you, not just your work or field or interests. What better place to do that than your local community?
While we train brilliant scientists, it is so easy for the skills of connection, engagement and persuasion to be overlooked in our professional education. At AAAS we want to empower you with the knowledge and skills to increase engagement and connectivity so we can restore America's trust in scientists. Restoring trust in science can only come after we restore America's trust in scientists.
So! With this in mind, you are formally invited to join the Local Science Engagement Network's Trust(ed) Scientists Project! Designed by yours truly, this low-stress, try-it-out creative project is meant to make engagement and trust building (and eventually science communication) easy and accessible for you to engage with on a local level.
There will be prizes for participants! Prizes include: the chance to win AAAS swag and chances to win a complimentary AAAS membership, a feature on AAAS social media or a member spotlight in the AAAS Member Newsletter!
Every month, I'll be posting easy accessible outreach tips and engagement ideas that you can apply in your local communities. Each type of outreach is designed to be customizable to your area of expertise and to be low effort to entry, with a high potential for reward. To participate in the project all you have to do is comment on each month's post with a picture or a sentence or two about how you adapted that month's prompt for your local community.
While we won't be providing prizes to those outside AAAS, we still want other scientists far and wide to participate so you (a AAAS member) are eligible to get one bonus entry per month in the project by sharing that month's prompt via social media. To be eligible for the bonus entries simply comment with a picture of your post (we will provide the text for an easy copy and paste). Stay tuned for the next post outlining the first prompt (coming Friday January 23rd)!
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Camille Ledoux
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