As I went to go edit this page, I immediately became upset when I saw the page said “Coming Summer 2022! :)”
I remembered it once read, “Coming Summer 2021!” before COVID hit, but I knew that was going to be impossible with travel restrictions, so I changed it last year, having some small hope I’d still be able to go.
My plan was to go to Copenhagen, Denmark and take courses on education there, but with COVID still restricting some things (and quite frankly needing to raise some funds to support going to Chesterfield three days a week for 10 weeks next semester on top of funds to maintain an apartment), I knew that dream had gone away pretty quick.
Nonetheless, I was still able to gain some experience through taking a class with a group of students from the Netherlands and working on a project, understanding the experiences of climate change globally and being able to create a solution in the form of a social innovation, or at least part of a solution to the overwhelming problem of global climate change.
I worked with one of my fellow Honors colleagues, Daniel, as well as two students in the Netherlands at the Honors College in Windesheim University, Danielle and Maud. We worked on finding a social innovation for different types of factors that cause climate change, such as lead in paint, lack of help and funding from corporations and large businesses, and other larger environmental factors.
There were some challenges, especially with time. Danielle and Maud didn’t like having to have meeting later at night, so we had to meet during the afternoon their time, which meant anywhere from 7:30-8:30 in the morning for us. There was a slight language barrier as well at times, as Danielle did not speak as fluid English as Maud did, and sometimes they would have to discuss a few things in Dutch, with Maud translating afterwards for us.
Towards the end, things became tight, with myself having to edit the whole podcast because they didn’t know how to use Zoom, as well as creating the whole infographic myself because Daniel didn’t have access to technology the week the project itself was due.
After editing the podcast and being able to listen to everything back, I was extremely proud of how far we come. I didn’t really get the idea of a social innovation, and honestly I still struggle with it (I’m sorry Jessi, I know you explained it to me like three times but it’s still just not fully making sense), but it all came together in the end, and being able to have the influence of people who aren’t in our backyard really helped with broadening perspectives.
One thing that kind of shocked me with differences is some of the things that happen more in the United States versus everywhere else. When I talked about how bad wildfires are, Maud said she didn’t think it was as much of a global issue as it is a national issue, which made me worry about conditions for climate change nationally and if they’re worse here or if there’s just different natural disasters that affect different areas in the same kind of severity level.
While I do really wish I could’ve gone to Copenhagen and had experience in different levels of education nationally, I did really enjoy getting to take this class, and getting to meet different kinds of people that I of course wouldn’t interact with on a day-to-day basis. I didn’t enjoy getting up early for weekly Zoom meetings with my group, but once the energy kicked in for my day, I really enjoyed getting to meet with them and learn different perspectives that truly make our world so unique.
Linked below is the Google Drive link for our podcast, our most treasurable artifact from the class.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ayw7-6I2OI92XAIyFBWivXD-OfT5nVO6/view?usp=sharing