To increase the likelihood of success, you need to apply a logical process to developing and implementing an initiative and you'll want to incorporate best education practices (BEPs) to whatever extent possible.

Selecting a BEP depends on your overall goals and what you want to accomplish . If you aren't sure exactly what you want to do, the BEP Decision Tree may help.

Decide on a Strategy helps you to decide exactly what type of outreach effort is appropriate to the problem you want to solve.

Once you've decided what you want to accomplish, Plan helps you reach your objective by using recognized program design and "diffusion of innovation" strategies. Topics in this section walk you through steps to:

• Familiarize yourself with the "community of interest".

• Identify and assess a target audience.

• Define clear goals and objectives, in cooperation with stakeholders and the target audience.

• Inventory resources and constraints and adapt your initiative to capitalize on results.

• Design your initiative with a focus on your goals, audience characteristics, and resources.

• Integrate relevant best education practices.

• Implement the initiative.

• Evaluate the initiative.

Choose BEPs links you to BEP background information and provides a tool to help you carefully identify the best education practices that will help you accomplish your objective. Here, you choose one of three Decision Trees; each walks you through common scenarios you may confront and helps direct you to BEPs important for that situation. Or, you can jump right to Assess a Program to see how your initiative compares to BEPs.

Learn from Others directs you to materials and "case studies" most similar to your situation that have been logged into the on-line library.   e-Networking provides access to common listserves of interest to water education and is a good way to ask your question to someone like yourself.