We started the
day to the famous Severn Cullis-Suzuki's speech about sustainability. If you
were wondering who she is, she was the girl, who was at the time 12 years old,
silenced the world for 5 minutes during one of the UN Conferences in Rio. Her
speech was equally inspiring as her speech 2 decades ago, although currently,
the UN wasn’t as pro-active about sustainability as 20years ago. Disappointed,
she decided to look towards the younger generation, us, to change the world,
quote "...not top politicians, but you,
the younger generation to change the world". Her words were of
encouragement to me, she also told us that we, the young people can do things
that adults can't, without money! And the fact that our voice is our most powerful tool to fight this war we are in.
Later on, in the
session titled Earth. Spirit. Culture. Art.
I realized that in every small thing that I do in everyday life, will have a
great impact on the environment. For example, I have this really bad habit of
leaving the lights, AC & heater on when I leave my hostel room and head for
an 8hour long class before coming back into the room and leaving the water
running while I apply shampoo and soap. These small things, I realized,
affected the whole environment.
We have only 1 world, 1 life, and all we need is one
community and one action plan to start the domino effect in the name of
sustainability.
This was further
emphasized in the talk by Quinn Runkle (a UBC student) where she said that to
kick start a project all you need is to kick the first domino piece down, which
will in turn, cause the rest of the domino chips to fall. Also, start small, in
your own community, take the first step, take the risk, learn and challenge
yourself. All these I took in, with much appreciation and encouragement to
change, firstly, my lifestyle, then others.
Then came the
football. This time polished slightly by the first day's events, I did so much
better, I even scored a goal through a goal kick! We roared with laughter and
joy when we defeated the opposing team 6-2 when they had very strong teammates. MVP of the game was
Nawaraj (ibwsc2012.edublogs.org), the 4 goals coupled with the impressive
footwork earned him that title.
Lastly, we
gathered in the CIRS theater for a Kutapira performance. It was mainly drums,
and everybody started dancing, or rather jumping up and down, to the rhythm of
the music. It started to get really stuffy and warm in the Theater, ironically
in a cool and dry atmosphere. It was an amazing performance, with the few
instruments they had, they "rocked the building".
Today was just
pure FUN. I learnt plenty of things in this multicultural gathering of
brilliant minds that have the same goal - to make things better, not just less
bad. But first, I have to start changing me, then grow outwards, which is to my
family, then neighborhood, state, country and then world (hopefully).
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| CD! |
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| Live band |
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