Climate Action Heroes Monthly Missions

Role: Copywriter
Where: National Children's Museum

Examples authored by myself

Community Captain

Walking is good exercise, can help reduce waste and carbon emissions, and also connects us with science and nature. With friends or family members, lead a five senses nature walk outside. See what you can find!

Pollinator Patrol

When fall comes around, bees are a buzzy as ever looking for food for the winter! One aspect of nature that helps bees digest their food is ample amounts of water. For this month, see if you can create or install a bird bath in your garden or on your windowsill that gives bees this precious resource!

Arbor Avenger

When fall comes around, the colors of leaves start to change! This is because of less sunlight. For every color of leaf you see, can you collect one fallen leaf? With the leaves you collected, we challenge you to make leaf rubbings! You can learn more about leaf rubbings here.

Water Warrior

Water is a resource that is all around us. One of the bonding features of living beings is their need for water! Did you know that NASA researchers believe that for us to find life in space, we must first search for water? What do you think are some signs that water is near? Learn more about the signs of life here and here.

Mighty Meteorologist

Did you know the reason our sky is blue is because the white light from the sun gets refracted in the atmosphere, making the blue light shine brightest? The sky isn't always blue, though. There are many other colors the sky can be! For this month, we want you to go out at the same time everyday and observe the sky's color as well as the weather for that day. At the end of month, compare all the colors that the sky was, and observe what differences the weather made in the sky's color!

What is Climate Action Heroes?

Climate Action Heroes is an exhibit created by the National Children's Museum featuring superhero identities that patrons can embody. There are 5 superheroes that kids can be: Community Captain, Pollinator Patrol, Arbor Avenger, Water Warrior, and Mighty Meteorologist.

What are the monthly missions?

Monthly Missions are tasks given by the museum to our Climate Action Heroes to complete. Some of these missions can be found on the website here.

A Shift in the Model

During my internship, rather than do one mission for all 5 heroes per month, the museum shifted the model to be 1 per hero per month. I was tasked with creating a year's worth of missions for the website.

My Ideology

For each mission, I ensured that they were nature and conservation themed. I also wanted the missions to be on topic for each hero and their theme. For example, Mighty Meteorologist missions are generally about weather and the atmosphere, while Pollinator Patrol missions are about bugs and plants.
I wanted the activities to be for all ages (grades K - 5). This would be metered through their grown ups’ discretion and participation.
Lastly, we wanted kids to not feel pressured to save the world themselves! Sometimes just being and taking in nature is enough to connect with it and inspire change. We didn’t want to set a precedent of personal responsibility.