We are delighted to share a blog written by student Smredhi, from Our Own English High School, who is part of team WeTogether delivering a Global Goals project for the 2020-21 GSL Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 957 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
We have evolved, both in terms of personal growth, learning and as a group together.
Project Summary
Hello and thanks for taking the time to read about our project, WeTogether. We are a teen-led group with the main goal to achieve a community of people who are aware of the roots of climate change and act responsibly. As a group, we believe every small action can make an impact when done with meaning and dedication.
Every now and then, our school brings up initiatives related to the environment and has formed eco clubs to make such initiatives full-fledged. With the help of these activities, we were able to develop a basic idea of why protecting the environment is so important. But as we learned and our knowledge of the environment expanded, we realized there may be an underlying problem that not everyone is aware of. This provoked us to dig on the topic further and form a group of like-minded people to educate the youth in particular.
One of our major plans for our project would be conducting webinars (since we cannot meet in person because of Covid restrictions), designing digital posters, and posting them on our socials as an initiative to educate our followers and taking up challenges or eco-friendly hobbies to carry out in our personal lives to play our part in this movement of fighting against climate change.
The Journey
One project in specific that is close to our hearts is Eco Loci, an international conference hosted by us in collaboration with two youth organizations, Greener is Cleaner and The Curae Organization from South Korea and India respectively.
It was a 3-hour conference with a 30-minute workshop presented by a staff from Greenpeace. Similarly, we organized a webinar for kids aged 6-10, covering important topics like pollution, plastic usage, and waste segregation. These two projects were amazing opportunities in which we learned how to properly research a topic, explain and present it to others. It improved our communication skills a ton which helped us contact a lot of youth-led groups to either collaborate with or to support us. It garnered us skills which we never knew we would be able to accomplish.
A major challenge, without a doubt, would be carrying out each and everything completely virtually because of covid restrictions in our place and across the globe. We were not able to meet in person, hence developed a boundary to execute plans efficiently. We are trying our best to create content in the form of informative posts to post on our socials and of course, evolve ideas for future digital workshops.
The Next Chapter
The GSL Global Goals Competition gave us a wonderful platform to take a small group in the eyes of many and contact with similar groups with alike ideas and intentions. We are more than midway since this journey began and it has been an eye-opening experience.
We would definitely keep working hard on our plans and ideas to strengthen our group and grow from the knowledge gained from this experience so far alongside learning from fellow groups. We are extremely elated with the response we got from both pupils and teachers of our school. To us, getting our class involved in our projects and gathering their support and interest would be one of our biggest achievements. It is really inspiring to see many other groups that have been formed to work on important social issues and educate each other!
We genuinely encourage each and everyone interested in helping such projects out, to join and contribute to them. Use your individuality and talent to shine your opinions and thoughts!
