What are you going to do about it? This is what a COPS (Communities Organized for Public Service) organizer asked Virginia Ramirez about what she was going to do about her widowed neighbor dying of a preventable illness due to no heat retention/lack of weatherproofing in her home. Despite paying her bills and taxes on… Read more »
Interns Sustain the Future
What interns do and learn as Sustainability Studies students.
Practices Toward Becoming a Sustainable Champion
When thinking about Starfish and how far they’ve come (not just in terms of helping countless women but also creating a link of help from one country to another) I’m discovering ways they are working towards many principles outlined for becoming a sustainability champion as written by Bob Willard in his 2009 book, The Sustainability… Read more »
Transition of Sustainability
Combining this summer’s reading assignments (The Common Life by Scott Russell Sanders, Sustainability Primer by The Natural Step, Soul of a Citizen by Paul Rogat Loeb, Bridging the Green an interview of Van Jones by David Kupfer, and Tools for the Transition to Sustainability by Meadows, Meadows, and Randers) with my… Read more »
Planet vs. Profits
So far the sustainability internship has provided additional perspective to my role at BWB. While I am familiar with many aspects of BWB, I now have more motivation to view my work and the business with sustainability in mind. As such, from the general sustainability perspective there appears to be many opportunities to improve the… Read more »
Raising Awareness
Reflecting on this past week, a couple things come to mind. The first…shipping. This week was a shipping week. Overstock is officially set up and surprisingly I was the one who was in charge of sending off and organizing the bought jewelry. Starfish couldn’t have their label on any of the Overstock boxes (apparently only… Read more »
Change your thinking change the future
I have finished all the readings assigned for my internship and I was actually glad to have been forced (not by physical means) to read them. It always makes a difference to see things from a different perspective since it is often hard to recognize our own behaviors without an observer’s point of view. I… Read more »
Extending Concern on an International Level
Everyone should read the first chapter of the book Soul of a Citizen titled “Making our Lives Count” by Paul Rogat Loeb (my local library had the book and the first chapter is a fast read). In terms of motivating others and inspiring them to do things they wouldn’t have thought possible, this is the… Read more »
Working the Land
When I first began my internship at Rise Up Farms, I couldn’t tell you the difference between a squash plant and a tomato plant. Okay, so maybe that’s pushing it a little bit, but you get where I’m going with this, huh? My expectations as an intern on the farm weren’t much…I gave Nick and… Read more »
Helping People Meet Their Needs
Right from the start I knew Starfish Project was working towards helping people have their needs met. This is the basic concept of system condition four of the Principles for a Sustainable Society, “reducing and eliminating our contribution to conditions that systematically undermine people’s ability to meet their basic needs…to ensure that human rights are… Read more »
Becoming credible creates dialogue and collaboration
I was thinking about my internship and the “Seven Practices of Sustainability Champions” (as outlined in Bob Willard’s book, The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook) and was wondering if I was implementing these practices or at least working at them. For those not familiar with the “Seven Practices of Sustainability Champions” they are: 1) get credible, stay… Read more »