Kristin Wisneski, co-sponsored by Arid Lands Research.

In 2007 I began working at the Office of Arid Lands Studies with the NASA Arizona Geospatial Extension program. Addressing the needs of nonformal education youth programs through Youth-Driven Community Asset Mapping has been the primary focus of our efforts in engaging youth with their communities and the environment. This experience has brought me into 4 different youth programs over the course of the past two years, all with different agendas and interests, to use geospatial tools for data collection, problem solving, decision-making and science-based knowledge and skills learning. For the NASA Space Grant Fellowship I am developing informal education materials to implement these skills and tools. Informal implies that the learning experience is not expert-led, but rather is voluntary and self-directed, and as it turns out over 70% of learning falls in this category. The materials will be developed and tested using participatory methods that engage the youth groups we currently work with through the Geospatial Extension program. Starting in January, the testing and refinement of the materials will continue through their use in the multi-disciplinary project called Stealth Health, led by five departments across the University of Arizona. Stealth Health aims to develop and test a novel approach integrating communication and location-based technologies with informal education for promotion of healthy behaviors aimed at decreasing the incidence of adolescent obesity. The intervention will take place in on-going after-school and weekend programs that use Youth-Driven Community Asset Mapping to empower and engage the youth. Lastly these informal education materials will be disseminated through an online portal calledMap@Syst on the eXtension.org website in hopes to impact a broader audience.