Sustainable Society = Gender Equality

The first week in Costa Rica is well underway and the students have begun their in-depth exploration into sustainability. The students worked together to come up with their own definitions of sustainability, which all centered around this main theme:

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”

With this ideal at the center of our minds, students were tasked with identifying how women fit into the sustainability community. While this is currently a male dominated field, women, especially younger generations, provide unique perspectives on long-standing social constructs. For example, our students are passionate about changing the conversations surrounding sanitation, economic growth, poverty/hunger, and clean energy. By being nurturing yet innovative, our students are advocating for sustainable development goals that prioritize gender equity. Here are some of the students key takeaways:

“People in our society must be okay with admitting that they aren’t practicing sustainability and be willing to make changes, no matter how small.” - Sophia D.

“We need to pull back the curtain to reveal the ugliness behind some of our favorite brands and products.” - Anna

“When women succeed, we all succeed!” - Meredith 

We furthered this conversation by asking students to envision their ideal sustainable cities. They thought about ways to reduce their ecological footprint and apply renewable energies. Many of the students detailed a future using increased solar panels, biodigestores, wind turbines, and growing their own food. Some other great ideas included establishing communities in isolated locations in order to reduce the need for gasoline or even living on an island and utilizing water as their main energy source. These future leaders did a fantastic job at thinking big and blending their varying passions. Each individual’s views were able to shine through, as some students emphasized the environmental impact in their design while others were thinking from a stronger financial standpoint. The one thing that everyone agreed on was that renewable energy is the future! To demonstrate this, students were broken up into different groups to build differing energy sources: wind turbines, solar panels, and water turbines all from legos. All the students loved this activity and worked together to create working models. They followed the process from start to finish. By connecting wires, running test trials, and experimenting with different locations, water speeds, etc. the students were able to extract the specific benefits and setbacks of each source. 

As we look into the coming weeks, the student leaders are excited to take what they have learned so far out of the classroom and into the field. Stay tuned to see how students advance the conversation around ecological footprints and help make all our futures bright!