Students for Environmental Action (SEA) worked in conjunction with the Hopkins Sustainability Office and the College Democrats to bring speaker and activist Libuse Binder to talk about the practical applications of her book, 10 Ways to Change the World in your Twenties, last Wednesday.
Binder spoke about how students can get directly involved in the world around them and how they can activate change.
Binder emphasized the importance of starting young, one of the main tenets of her book. “Why start in your twenties?” she asked the audience. “Well, you have the energy, you have the innovation, you have the understanding of social networks and you have the intelligence to create the world that we’re proud to hand over to our children and our grandchildren.”
Binder believed that these types of discussions would be especially applicable to students at Hopkins. “You have a really innovative and intelligent body. You really have the power to be creative and use some of the research and the ideas that you have to make the world better,” she said.
Binder’s presentation addressed the importance of personal decisions and how they can affect world change. “The planet is currently almost at 7 billion people. We’re committed no matter what we do to have 9 billion people on this planet by 2050. If that doesn’t make you nervous, it should,” she said. She discussed the ramifications of an increasing world population and how this increase will cause climate change, conflicts over diminishing resources, declining ecosystems, increasing poverty and increasing illness. “We must find ways to share our resources,” she said.
One way we can change the world is through our personal choices. “Marketers are looking to you to see what you’re buying. You drive a lot of these markets,” Binder said. “When we buy environmentally-friendly products, we help promote a sustainable world.”
Binder also discussed how students can help by not buying products that use plastic. “It takes seven times more water to make a bottle than it does to fill it,” Binder said. “And, 25 percent of bottled water begins as tap water.”
However, she also challenged the attendees to do more than just change their lifestyle. Though, when thinking on a larger scale, as Binder pointed out, sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. She said that that was her purpose in speaking: to point passionate students toward turning their words into actions. “A lot of young people especially college students focus a lot on raising awareness, but once your awareness is raised, then what? Then you actually need to do something.”
She offered tips on getting started. “Start small!” she advocated. Binder offered up success story after success story, inspiring students with the information that people in their twenties are out changing the world right now. She mentioned names like Jody Myrum, who started doing advocacy work in college and now advocates against gender-based violence with girleffect.org, and May Boeve, a junior at Middlebury, who turned her student-based environmental awareness organization into 350.org, an international campaign that seeks to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis.
Binder also mentioned a project that struck close to home for many students in the room. She talked about the Hydros Watter Bottle, a self-filtering water bottle created in part by Hopkins alum Winston Ibrahim. “He was in my frat!” one of the students called out when Ibrahim was mentioned on Binder’s list of “world-changers.”
At the end of the presentation, Junior Emma Graf, co-president of SEA, commented on the importance of an event like this at Hopkins. “It’s not unreasonable to say, ‘I could to that,’ and it’s really important to know that we can change the world. We can start non-profits in our twenties. We’re more than just little twenty-year-olds; we can do things!”
Junior Diana Wohler, also co-president of SEA, commented on the extensive planning that went into the event. “We’ve been planning this event since last semester. A lot of it has been SEA, but we’re an advocacy group and we don’t usually get funding from the Student Activities Council (SAC),” Wohler said. “But the SAC gave us a grant so we could have Libuse come talk and they covered the speakers, the set-up, the dinner afterwards. They were really great. The College Dems co-sponsored the event, too, and they donated some of their funding to help make this possible.”
Senior Daniel Hochman, president of the College Democrats, gave his whole-hearted support for the event. “We agreed to do some publicity and share the cost of the event. The Dems have a strong sense of urgency when it comes to the environment and supporting this event was a way to demonstrate that,” Hochman said. He also expressed interest in continuing his group’s relationship with SEA. “We look forward to doing more partnerships with them in the future.”
Unfortunately, the event, which had garnered over 135 attendees on the Facebook event, was under-attended with only 22 attendees total.
“Hopkins students are always busy, but the people who are passionate about these things were here and they all seemed to really enjoy it,” said Graf.
Joanna Calabrese, an employee in the Sustainability Office, pointed that it was the quality and not the quantity of the students that mattered. “The energy in the room and the message people walk away with is the most important thing.”
People agreed that they connected with the message. Freshman Emily Nink felt that the speaker inspired her.
“I’m already involved in similar activities, but Libuse’s presentation was like a reinforcement, inspiring me to keep doing what I’m doing,” Nink said. “Some of the methods she mentioned like getting corporate sponsors, applying for grants and doing outreach education are tools I can use for the projects I already have going. And I will definitely check out the websites she mentioned!”
Calabrese said her office will continue spreading Binder’s message at Hopkins. “We’re always hosting events that will support the kind of projects she mentioned. We always want to increase the opportunities and resources that Hopkins students have to make sustainable personal decisions.”
Binder’s message has the potential to create change in the world, and perhaps Hopkins will start seeing its effects on campus. At the end of her presentation, Binder charged the attendees to start changing their world right away.
“I challenge you, your circumstances challenge you, to use your creativity, use your curiosity and your energy to discover how to make the world a better place. And you don’t have to do it alone. There is energy and intellect and ideas. Our awareness has been raised; it’s the time for us to all take action.”
