Our Education is looking for middle school, high school and college aged youth (in public schools, private schools, or no longer in school) who believe in the cause of improving public education.  If you are one of these students, we need you to take the lead as a Petition Drive Director to help spread the word!

What is a petition drive director?
A petition drive director is a volunteer service opportunity for someone who wants to help Our Education's national student petition campaign by collecting student signatures for it!

What would I have to do?
Students who want to run petition drives can do so in one of two ways:

The first option is to gather signatures as an independent service project where you could work together with a group of friends by just printing out copies of the blank Our Education petition signature sheet to take to school and ask students to sign.  You can approach schoolmates to have them sign it during lunch, in classes and in hallways--wherever and however you think best!  If you choose to do it this way, please be sure to check out the resources below and email Aaron Tang at OurEducation(at)gmail.com if you need an adult to sponsor your volunteer hours!

A second way you could run a petition drive is to do as a more formal service project with an existing club or group on your campus (like NHS or Key Club in high school; or a service center in college).  If you choose do it this way, you'll just need to present the idea to your club members and advisor to get their approval for it.  We have prepraed the resources below that you can print out and use to explain the project to your group for their approval.

Either way works just fine, the important thing is just to get copies of the blank sheet and get people signing! 

After you decide whether to do this as an independent project with friends or a club service project, the next step is to plan for and run the actual petition drive.  To do this, you’ll basically want to work together to come up with a plan for:
1.) when the drive will be (your drive can start whenever you want and also last as long as you want so long as it finished by the end of the 2007-08 school year.),
2.) how you will advertise for it (there are some fliers you can download from our website at www.Oured.org/pages/downloads, you can email friends about it using our tell-a-friend feature at http://www.oured.org/forms/tell-a-friend.php, you can put up a morning announcement at school, etc.), and
3.) who will actually go where and when during the time you’ve set aside to gather the signatures (we’ve found that the most effective way to collect signatures is by having group members go from table to table during lunch periods with the blank petition sheets asking people to sign. If a teacher will let you speak in front of her or his classes, or if you can talk to big groups of students in your school all at one time, those would be great ideas too).
4.) Once you’ve finished gathering your signatures, just email me to let me know so that we can help you return the sheets to Our Education’s headquarters!  To do so, we can send you an envelope with postage and our mailing address on it that you can use to send in your signed petition sheets.  To get this envelope, just email me when you’re done with your drive and let me know what address we should send it to. At this point, a member of Our Education’s staff can write you a letter of confirmation regarding your leadership and service hours (please note that we are able to award one service hour for approximately every 8-12 signatures gathered).

Questions?? Email info(at)oured.org or IM with OurEducation2006 or OurEducation2007 on AOL!

RESOURCES YOU CAN USE (you can print these out and  use them to persuade your friends or club members to work with you on the project!):

Download our Petition Drive Director Overview - a one page description of what a petition drive is and how you can get one started!

Our Education Powerpoint Presentation - show this to your peers, schoolmates, teachers, principals, and anyone else to explain how important this campaign is!

Fact Sheet with statistics and information about the need for improvement in public education and how Our Education will help!

Here is the blank petition sheet if your drive will get signatures from students from just one school, and here is the sheet for a drive that will get signatures from  more than one school

***You can also help to get the word out about the petition using emails, AIM, myspace, facebook, and Xanga to spread the word and encourage students to visit www.OurEd.org and sign the petition online.