Background of Principal Investigator – Dave Finnigan, has a BA from Cornell in Anthropology, where he studied culture change with Alan Holmberg. He has a Masters in Health Education (MPH) from Berkeley, where he specialized in Population and Family Planning, and he advanced to candidacy for his PhD in Population and Development Planning at the University of Washington.


Dave spent 10 years, from 1966-1976, working as a consultant in Family Planning and Population in Korea, Taiwan, The Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal and Turkey for the Population Council, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, the World Bank, and various UN agencies. Among his many projects in Asia was helping change thinking about family size in Taiwan and South Korea as a consultant on Information, Education and Communication (IEC) with the Ministries of Health and Education. Taiwanese and Korean family size fell in one generation from the average of over five live births per married woman to around two for both populations. In Taiwan an important component of this change was a book that Dave co-authored called, in Chinese, “Paste Your Umbrella Before It Rains.” It was distributed to every middle school student on the island starting in 1969 when it became part of the health curriculum. As a result of these efforts, population growth has literally ceased in South Korea and Taiwan and with this demographic transition they have experienced an economic transition from less developed to developed status. Dave would have stayed in the population field in the Third World but his son has cerebral palsy so he changed focus and stayed in the US.


From 1976 through 2005 Dave took a self-esteem and school-esteem program, entitled Juggling for Success, to over 2,000 elementary and middle schools in North America. Dave’s educational preparation, his 10 years of experience working in attitude change regarding population and family planning in Asia and his 30 year stint working in schools has given him a unique set of insights and tools needed to help design, test, refine, and implement the Climate Change is Elementary™ Program for schools.


Dave is also a Certified Speaking Professional, or CSP, the highest earned rank in the National Speakers Association.


Missing Elements – Discussion I had on January 10th with Al Gore indicates that someone is working on an elementary school version of the book An Inconvenient Truth. If others can work on this part of the project I can concentrate on the creation of the link to schools and recruiting locations for the test from among schools visited in the past.


Any other thoughts on the topic will be appreciated. Who wants to work with me on this issue? I want to test this concept in Spring 2007, and start these programs in the Fall. Until further notice, every school that hires me to do my juggling program gets this second day for free if they want it.


Dave Finnigan

davefinnigan@yahoo.com

770-329-1152