{"id":856,"date":"2017-12-12T20:49:05","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T20:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/?p=856"},"modified":"2017-12-12T20:49:05","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T20:49:05","slug":"agency-in-the-anthropocene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/2017\/12\/12\/agency-in-the-anthropocene\/","title":{"rendered":"Agency in the Anthropocene"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image\"Image<\/p>\n

Food Lifeline volunteers pack and deliver leftover food from restaurants to homeless shelters.<\/p>\n

My group\u2019s original action project evolved from small-scale to large scale and systemic.\u00a0 After hearing in class about the UW Farm action project, a truly impressive implementation, we realized we could expand the scope of our project from UW campus to the community.\u00a0 We decided to ask restaurants to participate in Food Lifeline, a nonprofit organization that delivers food to homeless shelters.\u00a0 Convincing restaurant owners to sign up for Food Lifeline was both empowering and harder than we expected.\u00a0 I was pleasantly surprised that restaurant owners took time to listen, but many of them were too busy to reorganize their workplace to participate.\u00a0 I learned that even a low-cost program such as Food Lifeline can be cumbersome to implement.<\/p>\n

Although we did manage to design, propose, and implement our action project in a month, I wish that we had decided on a project sooner, been better about collaborating, and had more time.\u00a0 At first, we had a hard time thinking of ideas that were both systemic and feasible time-wise.\u00a0 It would have been beneficial to us to explore more examples. It also would have helped if we had been more specific in our group role assignments and had broken the project down into smaller parts with checkpoint deadlines.\u00a0 Another challenge we faced was finding time for contemplative practices.\u00a0 If we had set certain times at the beginning where we could all meet and lead ourselves through a structured contemplative practice, we might have had more ideas to work from or insights.\u00a0 My group action project experience made me realize the importance of creating a clear set of goals and guidelines for group projects and the power of working together to move towards a sustainable future.<\/p>\n

Overall, my best suggestion for future action groups would be to have the entire class participate in a scrapbook of sustainability projects that participants discover through online research, experience, or through the UW sustainability office.\u00a0 For example, my brother, who is a student at Princeton, told me about an annual competition where dorms try to decrease their heat and electricity usage for a month to increase awareness of excessive energy usage.\u00a0 Also, I found that Wellesley college elects sustainability representatives from each dorm to talk with small groups of students throughout the year about reducing carbon footprints.\u00a0 Such brainstorming sessions cause students to reflect on their own carbon footprints and think about changes they can make.\u00a0 Seeing other ideas that are already in action across the country might give students a good starting place and inspire systemic thinking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Food Lifeline volunteers pack and deliver leftover food from restaurants to homeless shelters. My group\u2019s original action project evolved from small-scale to large scale and systemic.\u00a0 After hearing in class about the UW Farm action project, a truly impressive implementation, we realized we could expand the scope of our project from UW campus to the community.\u00a0 We decided to ask… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-projects","tag-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":858,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions\/858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}