Be The Change
For the past couple of months, my World History class has been working on a Kahiau project. It basically is a project that encourages others to make an impact on a specific issue. The issue covered in my own, is the importance of taking care of the land by cleaning beaches, and starting at the source by cleaning our school and other facilities that produce trash. By doing this, I was forced to become a leader as well as a global citizen. A global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community's values and practices (Israel, What Does It Mean to be a Global Citizen?). I learned to be a global citizen because in my community, it’s kind of unusual to clean beaches as a service project because the values taught to us as children remind us to always clean after ourselves. Tourists, and even locals have left behind rubbish that ends up in the water. As a local, it’s sickening to see the waste damage the water’s ecosystem. I learned new values in doing this project because as a Hawaiian, we are taught to always take care of the land. Global citizenship has also been a part of the research process because often people see it as a Gandhi way of life whereas it actually starts with a small change that has huge effects. Starting this project made me realize how much our waste effects the community. In the beginning, it was unexpected that there was a large amount of man-made products laying on the beach and in the water. After cleaning and observing the pieces of trash that was on the beach, I noticed that it wasn’t as much man left trash, but more debris and micro plastics that are after effects of earthquakes, or even trash that is left in the water that was swept here in currents. When cleaning, I noticed that students, with the exception of some locals, admirably clean after themselves at beaches. However, newer people that move into the community don’t see the importance of making the areas around them as clean as they first found them. It was interesting to discover an inconsistent pattern in people cleaning after themselves. I also taught and explained what my project was to locals at the beaches that were cleaned. Our Earth has been in constant turmoil due to our polluting way of life. In a recent article, the hole in our ozone has grown three times the size of the United States. If we don’t take action and be the change we wish to see in this world to prevent polluting trash in our environment, the Earth may no longer be existent for future generations. According to the article, the larger the hole in the ozone, the warmer our Earth can get which is called global warming (2016 Antarctic Ozone Hole). The waters will begin to slowly dry out, rich vegetation will eventually be non-existent. All of which lead to the slow deaths of this beautiful world, and humanity. My project definitely made an impact on this world because the people who have taken part in the duration of beach clean ups and the research processes have had a sense of urgency to take care of our environment. It runs deeper than beach cleanups because I’ve developed a sense of love for our Earth, and have inspired others to think about the Earth as a person in a sense that it takes care of us. To have that mentality of the world is what really causes a change in this age because it can revolutionize the Earth. It causes people to act with purpose, and that alone is something that causes more change then the plain action itself.
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This week I was unable to collaborate with my group on our overall progress because I've been sick. However we plan on having our beach cleanups on the 29 on April or the 28. We are also thinking about joining the Sustainable Coastline beach cleanups to help further support them as well as our project. Overall, we've been able to plan and update our project plans as well as working on the project of cleaning beaches.
In class we've also been talking about global citizenship. Our project and overall purpose of this project represents global citizenship because we are taking action and advocating for our beaches and environment. Lately we've demonstrated global citizenship by connecting with various organizations to support us, even though some have not confirmed their support, or their need to help us. Though we have been told to change our project, or 'seek more resources to make a difference', we are continuing to follow feedback and constructive criticism. This also effects our communities because many BYU Hawaii students attend beaches on the North Shore and don't see the importance of cleaning and taking care of our beaches. By displaying our own love and global citizenship, we are able to inspire those around us. This week, we started to set dates and certain activities that will help our project progress. For example, on April 22 we have agreed to host a beach clean up at one of North Shore's dirtiest beach parks. This will help our main purpose of decreasing man made waste on our beaches. We also plan to collect data recording how much waste and trash our school produces each day. By doing this we have dented our project's progression and are not close to finishing, but have made a lot of progress from when we first started.
After considering the Sustainable Coastline's advice on expanding our project to not only numerous beach clean ups, we have planned on hosting school clean ups as well. They directed us to the Love Your Coast foundation. We emailed and have reached out to them asking for advice or support for our project. They have so far received 12,419 participants in cleaning beaches from around the world and have collected 2,853.5 sacks of trash. We hope to not only contribute to their causes, but fulfill our overall purpose of the project which is to better the overall environment and bring awareness of this increasingly important issue. We have reached out to our organization to gain support and received feedback and a reply. They have advised us too not only start as small as beach clean ups, but to start at the places that the trash comes from. For example, we were advised to start school clean ups, recycling and reducing waste and home, and or taking inventory of trash use at home and other work places. They are more than happy to support our cause and project.My partners, Cloe and Kaylee-Brooke, have a passion of the beach. We were inspired to impact our environment and reduce the issue of man-made pollution. The organization that we have reached out too is a local company that has the same views regarding pollution and its effect on our beautiful island. We have reached out to Sustainable Coastlines of Oahu and are collaborating with them to advertise our project and gain support.
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About This ProjectThis project is for the sole purpose of bettering the overall environment. We are starting slow by hosting beach clean ups and spreading awareness to our communities. Archives
May 2017
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