Go City Green Through a Community of Practice: Knowledge Management for Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

Go City Green is an environmental initiative that uses a Community of Practice model of Knowledge Management. In this model, knowledge experts from the university and the international community, facilitators, and university students engage in productive discussions, articulating problems and solutions for environmental protection. Spearheaded by the Bachelor of Arts in Communication Program of Leyte Normal University, Go City Green emphasizes the emergence and dissemination of knowledge throughout the community, from a Communication class to the College of Arts and Sciences and to the international community, with interactions focused on collective interventions both on campus and the outside world. At the end of the Community of Practice, knowledge outcomes reveal various behavioral actions done in the university that contribute to environmental protection. These include waste segregation through reduce, reuse, and recycle; use of personal tumblers instead of plastic mineral bottles; reduction of energy and water consumption by turning off lights and air conditioners in classrooms and turning off the water faucet when doing something else; less consumption and expenditures to reduce waste; paperless submission of student papers; deletion of unwanted and excessive data from cellphones that reduce carbon footprints; continued adherence to health protocols; risk and disaster management practices; and instilling ecological sensitivity, which contribute to their mental health and well-being.