July 28, 2010- How to change the world

Dr. Will Allen was born on a small family farm on the North Island of New Zealand. Little did he know that on July 28th, year 2010, he would give a talk that would change the lives of 10 American students. He titled it "Solutions for Creating a Sustainable Culture." All joking aside, it was a very informative talk. We learned many things about the way that people make decisions and changes in their lives. It is not possible to create change in a community that is disjoint. When one side of the community wants to build a ditch to prevent flooding and save their houses, they don't understand when environmentalists say no because it will harm fragile freshwater habitats. Talking with and educating the people of a community about the environmental issues is as important as discovering researching the issues themselves. In the photo above we see our teacher acting the veritable Vanna White while Dr. Allen explains how everyone has a different idea of what a sustainable culture would look like. In one group activity, Dr. Allen told us to write down 10 words that defined conservation to us and then to share them with our group. We are in comparable studies, but no group came up with one similar word to define conservation. So if people with similar mindsets can't define this the same way, how would we expect a whole community to do so? The message sent here today was that we have a long way to go to become a sustainable culture, but that hopefully one day, it will actually be possible. So these 10 American students left with a higher knowledge and an even greater longing to change the world.

Kira