Readings and how they've affected my project

Well, the reading tasks we've been assigned over the past couple weeks have been absolutely fascinating....Okay, so maybe not--but they have actually been very useful and quite applicable to some of the roadblocks that keep giving me trouble with my project.
So I'll begin by explaining some of my issues with my project. I think the two greatest problems I'm having are with choosing an appropriate audience and with establishing my authority for this audience. Recall, first, that one goal of my risk communication project is to solidify the risks of teen pregnancy for my audience. (They already know it's not a good thing, but I want to provide statistics and remind them just how bad of a problem it is. I'm considering this portion of my goal to be care communication.) My second goal is to provide suggestions for teen pregnancy prevention programs--either for implementing new ones or for reforming old ones. (I'm considering this portion of my ultimate goal to be consensus communication.) Because I really want to see changes made, I've chosen to focus my efforts on an audience who has the power to make them. That is, my intended audience includes educators in administrative positions, such as principals and school board members.
Maybe it's self-doubt, and maybe I'm just overthinking it, but some of the reading re-awakened concerns I've had with my audience. All the talk in "The Determinants of Trust and Credibility in Environmental Risk Communication" made me question--why on earth would school board members listen to me? If I were an expert doing the communicating (all of our reading seems to make this assumption, especially "A Diagnostic for Risk Communication Failure"), perhaps school board members would take the time to consider my arguments. But I'm an undergraduate, not an expert, and I'm outside of the system. I don't know how school board officials allocate money to different programs. Because teen pregnancy affects a minority of students, how am I to convince school board officials that it is important to redistribute funds? Should I instead focus on communicating to philanthropists or "angel" contributors (isn't that what people are called who just donate money for a cause without any apparent connection or reason?). Anyway, the point is that Trust and Credibility reading shook me and has made me worry about the effectiveness of my choice of audience.
For now, I'm going to lower my sights a little. Instead of hoping for actual reforms to take place, I'm going to retain my intended audience and instead focus more on creating awareness. With my non-expert status, I think I would be more successful focusing my efforts on the "care" portion of my goals. I will still include suggestions for reform, thus retaining the consensus portion of my goals, but I will expect less of the educators in terms of actual reform.

Lastly, although the piece in the Risk Communication text (Lundgren & McMakin, ch. 16) on working with the media has very little to do with my project *at this stage in the process*, I found this reading assignment to be quite educational. This class has largely taught us to take on the roles of risk communicators. In this position, I have always assumed my audience was some group out in the public that I was trying to reach out to. But this chapter reminded me that often a risk communicator's first audience (and first hurdle to get over) is the media. I'd forgotten that risk communication isn't always accomplished directly, communicator to intended audience, but quite often is accomplished via a third party. The media is the middleman. This drastically shifts some of the goals of risk communication, and adds plenty more to consider. I guess this will be the focus of our upcoming press release assignment.