Hi everyone— it's Elizabeth here! Thank you for reading my first blog post. Today I will be talking about the several initiatives I started in my high school community when I saw the need to make a difference for those around me, and I hope my story will inspire others to do the same. Culture Clubs of America Inc.In today’s world, discrimination often causes our differences to isolate us from each other. However, I believe that if we can be taught to hate our differences, we can also be taught to love them. Our differences—our heritage, traditions, culture—are important parts of our personal identities and allow us to have unique perspectives. My own upbringing by Russian and Portuguese parents has influenced my individuality and helped me see the value of diversity—of celebrating and learning from each other. With hopes of helping others see this too, I decided to initiate a Culture Club Chapter that has served as the center of inclusion and diversity in our community. Within this club, I have helped organize guest speaker appearances through which we gain a deeper understanding of cultures around the world. Some of the guest speakers who’ve shared their culture include the Executive Board members of Boston University’s Arab American Heritage Student Organization and a Tribe Preservationist of the Poccasset Wampanoag Tribe. Students from our club have become comfortable and excited to share their own heritage, teaching us about their customs ranging from Chinese culture to Jewish traditions, and foreign exchange students of the community have presented about their home country and ways of life at club meetings. Along with this, I plan and coordinate varying activities such as the decorating of a Culture Club holiday Tree to represent the diversity of our school, and the playing of a “We’re Not Really Strangers: Race and Privilege Edition” card game to educate students of social disparities, and participate in several fully funded cultural conference field trips in partnership with University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. The Culture Club Chapter has become a safe and inclusive environment where students are able to learn about different cultures, embrace their individuality, and overcome adversity as a whole. Girl UpI’ve grown up in a house full of inspiring women— including my mother who is a physician in our community, my older sister who is a well accomplished graduate of Providence College, and my little sister who has grown to be a mature young lady on her way to high school next year. I’ve been fortunate enough to have strong, hard working women who have guided me through life, pushing me to be an advocate for myself and follow my dreams to become a doctor in the future. However, within my own community, I noticed a lack of mentorship and opportunities for girls similarly passionate about STEM, which inspired me to take action and empower other young women to see and reach their full potential. I became involved with the Girl Up Organization, starting a chapter of “STEMinists” in my school district, and joining the Girl Up New England Coalition as a member of the STEM Committee. Through Girl Up, I have had the opportunity to create STEM related resources, activities, and initiatives necessary to advocate for young girls’ STEM education and gender equality within STEM careers. Girl Up also provides young women the chance to become coalition leaders, teen advisors, and connect with other girls of different ages, backgrounds, and interests across the world, through national and global summits. For example, in my first year as a member of Girl Up New England, I was able to help coordinate a summit in Cambridge focused on menstrual equity. We heard from youth activist panels, de-stigmatized periods through STEM education, packaged sustainable period kits for women in war-torn areas overseas, and learned ways to advocate for menstrual equity and the I Am Bill from inspiring female leader, such as Senator Jehlen. Just as the women in my life have inspired me to make a difference, my hope is that the young girls I’ve mentored will continue to lead the fight for gender equality, pave the way for other future female leaders, and expand our community of members who are breaking glass ceilings. Join The Movement: How You Can Make A Difference Today!Are you inspired to make a difference in your own community? If you have identified a problem you hope to solve, click on the link below to find out how YOU can get started!
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My first blog post! If you're reading this, thank you so much for taking the time to visit this site. I hope its resources and stories inspire you. That's why for the blog's first post I'd like to share some things I've learned as a Campus Ambassador for the Planetary Health Alliance this year. Working with this organization has helped me learn so much about the planet and its connection to healthcare and medicine, especially in the midst of a pandemic like COVID-19. Let me know what you think & share your thoughts in the comments! ________________________________________________________________________________________________ As an undergraduate student with plans to attend medical school, I’ve always had a special interest in healthcare. But as an avid surfer who’s grown up next to the ocean my entire life, spending time in nature has always been a kind of medicine for me. I had always known of the mental health benefits that came with stepping away from the stresses of life and stepping into the quiet rumbles of the ocean. But it wasn’t until I learned more about planetary health through the Planetary Health Alliance Campus Ambassador Program that I discovered just how important healthy ecosystems are to sustaining human health and vice versa. Can You Save Lives by Saving Trees? Last year, while browsing the internet for summer internships, I came across an organization called Health in Harmony. Founded by Dr. Kinari Webb, this organization is rooted in the idea that human health and planetary health are inextricably linked. As an undergraduate student, Dr. Webb traveled to Borneo to study orangutans. However, deforestation, she would learn, was eradicating their habitats at alarmingly high rates. In her TEDx talk (watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJkeZ_4wuYg), Dr. Webb said it was easy to hate the loggers who destroy the orangutans’ habitat for profit. But as she got to know them, she discovered that these loggers were in financially strenuous situations. They didn’t cut down the forests because they wanted to--in fact, according to Dr. Webb’s survey, 99% of the loggers wanted to preserve the forests for future generations, and 100% of them wanted to quit logging completely. These loggers know that the forests act as watersheds for their rice fields and are home to not only beautiful orangutans but also incredible biodiversity. But when your wife needs a C-section or your child is sick, the only way to pay medical bills is through the fast cash illegal logging provides. Dr. Webb realized that to save orangutans, she’d have to save humans too. She went back to the U.S. and attended medical school before returning to Indonesia to create a dual healthcare and conservation program through which her nonprofit, Health in Harmony, was born. By partnering with the Indonesian people, Dr. Webb was able to offer the loggers and their families affordable, high-quality healthcare and even train them in sustainable agriculture that eliminated the need to slash-and-burn forests. But it gets better. The people of Borneo have the option of paying for their healthcare with seedlings (used for reforestation), manure (fertilizer for organic farming), handicrafts (sold to pay for medicine), or with labor (which makes operating the organization cheaper). These modes of payment completely eliminated the need for people to log. Furthermore, their training in organic farming actually enabled them to take up agriculture instead because they no longer needed to purchase expensive chemical fertilizers to do it. Villages that had completely stopped logging were then awarded a 70% discount on their medicine. Unsurprisingly, after 5 years, Dr. Webb’s project significantly improved not only the forest’s health but also the health of Borneo’s people. Through Dr. Webb’s work, the people of Borneo have become guardians of the forest. By showing them how to fulfill their needs more sustainably, Dr. Webb has enabled the villagers to adopt lifestyles that protect the forests that sustain them. Excited and inspired by Dr. Webb’s work, I sought to involve my college in Health in Harmony’s Educational Exchange program. This was my first project as a Planetary Health Alliance Campus Ambassador (PHCA). My hope was that through this program, students like me who are interested in medicine and conservation could visit Borneo and volunteer with Dr. Webb’s organization. Unfortunately, however, we had to put this trip on hold due to the spread of COVID-19. Habitat Destruction and the Spread of Disease Although I was disappointed we had to temporarily suspend our plans, more intense sadness overtook me when daily news reports shared the rising death tolls around the world. As the pandemic progressed, me and other PHCAs found ourselves discussing the consequences of environmental destruction--one of them being zoonotic diseases. It wasn’t until this discussion that I realized diseases make up another facet of the human and planetary health relationship. I knew that COVID-19 had been transmitted to humans from bats, but I didn’t know that viruses like it--HIV, Ebola, SARS, Zika--had also arisen from human contact with infected animals. The jump of diseases from wildlife to humans is becoming increasingly frequent as population growth, deforestation, and uncontrolled hunting/poaching and fishing become more common. Wild animal markets in particular are the perfect place for a virus like COVID-19 to surface. Located in densely inhabited areas, these markets bring many species of animals, some of which are endangered, into contact with people. (Visit https://www.huffpost.com/entry/emerging-disease-environmental-destruction_n_5e9db58fc5b63c5b58723afd to learn more.) Unfortunately though, if we fail to take actions that will protect our ecosystems, we are setting ourselves up for another pandemic. Destroying animals’ habitats not only traffic them into closer proximity with one another, encouraging the transmission of diseases, but also makes it more likely for humans to come into contact with potentially infected wildlife. Dr. Webb’s work with Health in Harmony is doing so much more than just saving trees--it’s saving lives, and not just because now the people of Borneo don’t have to worry about their medical bills. By protecting their rainforests and keeping the habitats of wildlife intact, they are also preventing the transmission of zoonotic diseases to humans. COVID-19, like many other zoonotic diseases, has brought global attention to the need for environmental protection. We must stop seeing the fight against viruses like COVID-19 as independent of the fight for healthy ecosystems. Our negligence towards the environment and its wildlife have already resulted in multiple outbreaks that have cost so many lives. As an aspiring physician, my love for nature has made me more in tune to the dynamics between planetary and human health. But I’m now realizing that if we want to prevent future viral outbreaks, we must understand how vital preserving our ecosystems is to protecting our own health. Like climate change, environmental destruction poses a direct threat to human health. You think COVID-19 makes it hard to breathe? Imagine what pollution will do if we don’t put an end to it. It’s so important that healthcare providers perceive threats to the environment as threats to public health because ultimately, it will be they who have to deal with illnesses and deaths we could have prevented--it will be me future physicians like me who might have to treat patients with illnesses perpetuated and spread as a result of environmental hazards and destruction. Hope For the Future and Faith in Our Youth My PHCA family is made up of students from 16 different countries. Some are undergraduates like me, some are Master’s students studying tropical medicine, some are PhDs working in conservation, and some are even training physicians. It gives me so much hope that despite how different the fields we are studying are, we have all made learning about sustainability and environmental protection one of our top priorities. Our love for nature is one that we want to share with younger generations. So, we have taken up the work of creating a children’s book that will educate today’s youth about planetary health. We hope that our “ABCs of Planetary Health” book will teach children about ecosystems, encourage them to foster an appreciation for the natural world, and help them cope with the stresses and isolation COVID-19 has brought about. Although our publication is a small project, we hope that it can empower more youth to one day tackle the same problems we are. Maybe it’s too optimistic, but my hope is that by the time the children reading our book are adults, these problems will not exist or at least have working solutions in implementation. My hope is that somehow, some way, humanity will unite together to protect this beautiful blue planet that we call home--for our sake and for the planet’s sake. It’s all in our hands--our health, our children’s health, our planet’s health. It’s time that we all hold these things close to our hearts rather than handing them off to the next generation. It’s time we take action. |
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