My group’s progress towards generating an action project has been riddled with obstacles and general frustration. We initially began our project with a very strong focus on decreasing waste production within the Greek community but this idea was ultimately tossed because of our realism surrounding our inability to mobilize permanent change within a community that doesn’t want to change. The more that we have been trying to move forward in our project the more disheartened I’ve become with the whole concept. Our problem doesn’t seem to lie in a lack of ideas as we’ve generated various potential projects. We’ve tried petitioning for a limit on plastic products at UW and creating a workshop to reformat plastic bags into reusable bags, among other projects. Yet for one reason or another there was a great deal of red tape surrounding our legislation focused projects and we lacked a lot of the financial resources to support our more creative endeavors.
So essentially where my group is now is scrambling to find a project, not on the basis of content or interest, but based on the need to produce something by the end of this quarter. This is extremely irritating given how excited I was at the beginning of this project to produce meaningful change in my community. Now I just feel like all my ideas and hopes have just been squashed. Even a simple concept like trying to plant new trees involves so much legislative B*S* in terms of land ownership and procedural differenced in the private and public sectors. It took me 4 weeks to even hear back from Seattle’s forestry department and all they told me was that I can volunteer at their events but can’t actually do anything on my own.
Unfortunately this process has freaked me out, to say the least. I can’t help but think on how if I am having this much difficulty with developing projects on such a small scale, it would be nearly impossible for me to help instigate any real, large-scale change in my community or as a member of this nation. I know that if I were to tackle any large issues I would most likely have more help but honestly this experience has been very demoralizing and I better understand why so many of my coworkers and friends feel as though we can’t really change anything in our world.