Future Earth Australia uses Thriving Earth Exchange’s 4-phase model to support each community science project through its 6 to 12-month lifetime. 

Scope: Projects are developed and defined based on community priorities. Through a series of conversations with a Thriving Earth Exchange project liaison, community leaders explore their values, priorities, strengths, and challenges, and their connections to Earth and space science. Scope is complete when the community has committed to pursuing a specific project. 

Match: We identify a scientist with the right skills and expertise to engage pro-bono with the community for the duration of the project. Match is complete once the scientist and community leaders have been introduced and agree to work together on a project. 

Solve: Community leaders and scientists work together collaboratively to achieve the project objectives. We provide project mentorship, facilitation and support, as well as connections to potential partners or needed resources. Solve is complete once the final project outputs have been completed and delivered to end users for a defined outcome.  

Share: Every community is unique, but many face similar challenges. Sharing the results of Thriving Earth Exchange projects enables other teams to adapt and build upon community science solutions. Share includes making sure that the project outputs translate beyond the community, recognizing the efforts of volunteers, and providing feedback on the Thriving Earth Exchange process. 

For more in-depth information, along with descriptions of past projects undertaken using this model, can be found at: https://thrivingearthexchange.org/how-it-works/