The Green Map System is a global eco-cultural movement, energized by local knowledge, action, and responsibility. Green Maps are locally created maps that chart the natural and cultural environment. Using adaptable tools and a shared visual language of Green Map Icons to highlight green living resources, Green Maps cultivate citizen participation and community sustainability.
In its first decade, the Green Map movement has spread to 45 countries, and more than 220 diverse Green Maps have been locally published. While the majority reflects the viewpoint of adult mapmakers, youth and multigenerational groups are also creating Green Maps across the U.S. and around the world. Using Green Map's universal icons to point out the full range of natural and cultural resources worth celebrating, restoring, and sustaining, youth express wonderful insights about their local environment. Green Maps are powerful tools for cross-cultural communication, and youth can guide their peers, elders and decision makers to make eco-smart improvements in daily habits as well as influence community-wide planning with their carefully researched and thoughtfully created maps.
Click "Youth" at GreenMap.org for an overview of the Green Map Youth Resources and the terrific poster-style, printed, GIS, or web-based mapping projects underway or completed to date. See how youth utilize Green Map System's framework as an enjoyable and open learning experience. Read about participating, and start planning how your class can use these adaptable materials to enhance learning objectives in civics, social studies, geography, ecology, and art courses, and to extend the beneficial impacts of out-of-school programs, too.
Youth maps can focus on a very small area (even just the school and its grounds) or broadly focus on the wider community. Thematic Green Maps by youth are also popular - scroll down to see those by NYC's Recycle-A-Bicycle for example (further details at Green Apple Map - click Allied Maps). Green Map's adaptable youth mapping resources include guidelines for setting themes, interviewing the old-timers, Icon activities, customizable field reports, and a sensory journal.
In addition to these mix'n'match resources, there's a step-by-step "Multi-map Manual" based on the LoMap project which involved 250 Lower Manhattan youth in nominating, describing, and drawing green sites for this professionally composed map (you can request free copies of LoMap for your class, while supplies last). If you are planning a multigenerational project, please peruse the rest of the website. There are exemplary projects, stories, and suggestions that will inspire you! You may find there is a citywide Green Map project under way in your community that you can connect with directly, as well. Youth are often involved in these larger scale projects as field observers, fact-checkers, interns, map distributors, etc.
Think about your Green Map - will it be a planning exercise, a research-oriented inventory project, or an eco-literacy lesson? Send Green Map an e-mail at info[at]greenmap.org to register your project, and you'll receive the complete CD of resources (including some in Spanish), a sampling of youth-made Green Maps, and other benefits of being part of a global network for sustainable communities. In 2006-07, Green Map will be assessing these educational materials and involving all users, hopefully including you, in updating them.
The Green Map Store has several useful resources. Click the link on any page of the GreenMap.org website and find out about collaboratively written books, such as:
* Mapping our Common Ground: A Community and Green Mapmaking Resource Guide. Designed to extend the process toward dialogue, network building and community visioning, this book was co-created by the Common Ground Community Mapping Project (Victoria, BC), Green Map System and the Mapas Verdes Americas Network. English and Spanish editions, $15; 50 B&W pages, 2005.
* Green Map Atlas: An Anthology of Mapmaking Stories from Asia and North America. This is appropriate for older students, who can also download the Atlas and its stories for free from www.GreenAtlas.org. The Guided Tour is a PDF overview designed for classroom use; download it from the Introduction page. The entire website and atlas may be downloaded in Japanese or English. Note: With more than 150,000 downloads to date, there may be a small fee charged in the near future. Co-created by Green Map System and Green Map Japan. CD in English or Japanese, $15; Book, $35; CD and book, $40; 88 color pages, 2004.
* Green Map Activity Guide. This is more useful for intergenerational or adult mapmaking. Based on the processes developed by Japan's many mapmakers and published by Green Map Japan. English and Japanese, $12; 40 color pages, 2005.
* Green Maps from several locations, posters, etc.
Green Mapmaking can help build strong connections between the classroom and the real world in your community. As founding director, I look forward to sharing ideas and views in the near future.
Contact: Wendy E. Brawer at web[at]greenmap.org.
