Eco-Literacy 2014

We've received a letter from Lina Blount, BMC '13, who is now working as the Field Associate with PennEnvironment on their anti-fracking campaign. She found her job through the Environment America Fellowship Program, which is recruiting now for next year's Fellow class--and asks that we share the posting w/ y'all.

Lina also extends an invitation for anyone interested in the Fellowship, curious about what Environment America is and is not, and what role it plays within the broader environmental and social justice movements to get in touch with her--she'd love to be helpful as students consider their steps after the Mawr.

To learn more and apply visit http://jobs.environmentamerica.org/

What Environment America fellows do

As an Environment America fellow, you’ll get a two-year crash course in the nuts and bolts of environmental activism, organizing, advocacy and the kinds of institution-building that can sustain long-term battles.

You’ll work for one of our 29 state affiliates or our national group, and run one of our campaigns. You’ll work alongside a staff person with 5 to 20 years of experience and participate in classroom trainings a few times a year to complement what you learn in the field.

As a fellow, you won’t just learn how to make an impact; you’ll make one. Here are a few examples:

We have since the beginning of our 360-planning been thinking about how we might broker a conversation among-and-between community partners who focus on social justice issues, and those who focus on responding to and minimizing environmental degradation. Dorceta Taylor's visit in early March will direct us to these questions.

In Jody's class today, you began to talk about how we might do this: do we want to bring in people from off-campus land conservation organizations, and similar group of folks from social justice groups (what might motivate them to attend such a session?). Or should the discussion be campus-based? (how might we draw a diverse participation from the affinity groups, and the environmental activists?) "What's that thing that draws different people in?"

Please continue the discussion here....let's try thinking out loud together about how we might do this....

    “Home is where the heart is,” so said Pliny the Elder. Home need not consist of a physical place, a city or location one can visit or the material structure in which a person grew up or currently inhabits. Rather, home comes to exist more as an emotion, a feeling of belonging and comfort, of safety and welcome, a space–be it physical or mental–one can claim as one’s own. However, when asked to describe home and what it means to me I find myself grappling to identify one single physical location, thinking of the houses in which I have lived (four in total, though only three of which I honestly remember), my dorm rooms this and last semester, the three states and four cities I have inhabited. In each of those places I can clearly picture my house (or the dorm building), my room, the environment just outside, the people and rooms and structures nearby, and I almost feel compelled to identify one as unequivocally home. The problem is, when I really consider home, which in itself is quite a charged word loaded with myriad connotations, nothing stands out as my one true home. I can talk ad naseaum about the different places in which I lived at one point or another, and I can turn right around and launch into a discussion about how home need not be a place but can instead take the form of people or feelings or smells or air temperatures or the taste of the tap water.

Shamial Ahmad

ENG 216: Re-Creating Our World

January 25th, 2014

Home and Belonging

            ‘”Where are you from?””  This question no matter how often it may be asked of me always throws me off a little bit. Where am I, Shamial as a person from? Well, that could be a lot of places. I could be from the city that never sleeps, the concrete jungle that replaced my parents native land of Pakistan when they migrated to the United States. I could say I’m from New York City since that was where I was born. OR perhaps I could even say I’m from down south. Andalusia, Alabama, my home for 5 years; population 9,000.  My most distinct memory of Alabama was the pond in our backyard that I would throw things in my when parents weren’t looking. There was just something appealing to 5 year old Shamial seeing rocks, sticks, and one time my Juicy Juice juice box, be at the  top of the pond and then sink to the bottom.  And the most wonderful swing I had hanging for a large tree in our front yard.  I also vividly remember that tree having fallen on top of our garage when Hurricane Opal came through. We moved a little after that.

Home and Belonging

I am from stacks of books

From hiking boots and oversized raincoats

I am from the high desert,

the scent of fresh air and dog and cat hair.

I am from the mountains and rivers,

the juniper trees

whose limbs I remember as if they were my own.

I am from PBS and NPR,

from Vietnamese music videos

from 52 cousins, laughter, and loud Irish Catholic family reunions.

I am from public libraries, hikes and bike rides.

I am from “Orygun not Ore-gone”

and the wisdom I have admired in my older brother

I am from Monopoly and “Jungle School”

from Oregon and Ireland

from my grandfather’s photos

and the diary entries stored under my bed.

Feb. 8 @ Haverford. See details on the attached poster....

ECON 136:  Week 2 Tasks

Monday (postponed from January 24):   Community Profiles:  Counting what we can Measure

Preparing for class:

Take a few minutes to brainstorm a list of the sort of facts you would want to know about a community you might be visiting or where a friend lives.  The rest of your preparation will consist of looking at what others think is important to note about communities.   Note on the sheet with your list those items you did not include and items and items others failed to include.

Read this profile of Camden’s Water Front South neighborhood http://www.heartofcamden.org/publish/community_about.html

which our Eco-Literacy 360 group visited on Monday.

Read the attached profile of West Nottingham Township, where David Ross lives

Go to http://factfinder2.census.gov, enter West Nottingham township, Chester County, Pennsylvania in the search box and note the sort of community data collected by the US Census Bureau.

After Class:

Start thinking about the Profiling Your Community Assignment (attached) due February 3.