As National Moth Week’s country coordinator for Canada, Aundrea Schneider has shown that her enthusiasm for our mission has no bounds. This summer, she has added a new role as social media specialist for our worldwide citizen science project to increase visibility and participation for NMW and communicate its value to wider audiences.
“I accepted this role because it allows me to expand on my current involvement with NMW, further supporting the remarkable team that I’ve been working with over the past year,” Aundrea said. “We’re all living busy lives, and since the project is solely funded by donations, we work together however- and whenever- possible, in order to make National Moth Week a success each year.
“I’m excited to be involved in the social media side of things, because I get to interact with so many passionate moth-ers, artists, scientists and enthusiasts from all over the world!
Aundrea says she plans to post more engaging content, reach out to potential collaborators and “hopefully get some traditions started during the cold seasons, to keep people inspired and having fun.” She says she is keeping some of her ideas under wraps in the meantime.
“My main goal right now is to bring consistency to our social media presence by focusing on the current platforms we’re using – Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter and getting those to flow well together,” she added. “I want to create an ease-of-use, in which any member of the team could easily work with, when necessary.”
So far, Aundrea’s work with NMW’s “mothweek” account on Instagram is paying dividends, with a 500+-percent increase in account reach and engagement over the last month. While engagement generally jumps as NMW nears, Aundrea says she enjoys seeing the numbers grow and receiving positive comments from moth-enthusiasts on the platform.
Despite also being very busy developing her business in wilderness education, and training as a Wilderness First Responder instructor, Aundrea will continue to serve as Canada’s country coordinator for now.
“I have enjoyed mothing, spreading awareness, educating and designing promotional content, but I’ve got much to do yet, in terms of growing and coordinating the project, here in Canada,” she says. “There are many great moth advocates and educators that I intend to reach out to, as well.”
We are delighted to welcome Aundrea to the NMW team as our first social media specialist.