Service Learning Project

My service learning project involved my whole fraternity going out one morning to plant trees on UNT campus. UNT requires all greek members to do at least 5 hours of community service to ensure that North Texas greeks give back to the community in some way. Early in the semester after our initiation we had a weekend event with others to plant young trees. It felt kind of nice to do community service again. Other than waking up at 7 in the morning it was actually fun. although I'm sure it took us longer than the average landscaper to plant a tree I still felt like I did something for my community. The weekend before earth day we all were debating what we should do to not only get sorority girls to come out and have fun with us, but also get those 5 hours of required community service at the same time. When I was younger I actually got into trouble for having fireworks in my possession which landed me 10 hours of community service in a library. That didn't really benefit anyone other than the local librarians with organizing the books. Working outside felt good and although it was just a few trees I still felt like I gave back in some way. In the piece titled Environmental Justice, Robert Melchior Figueroa poses questions such as, How are environmental benefits and burdens distributed across populations? In what ways are citizens compensated for inequities in environmental burdens? The questions are touching the issues of how each of us is turning the effects of our own carbon foot print. The biggest and most important question is, What are the acceptable moral, social, and physical criteria for the distribution of environmental burdens? I drive a honda accord to and from work and I choose to walk to class. This is one of a number of different ways that my family and I contribute to the number of already polluting carbon emissions. I was curious what my actual carbon foot print would be. It turned out to be 5.8 tons of CO2 emissions per year. A total of 300 trees can counter balance the amount of pollution one person produces in a lifetime. In order for me to efficiently to reduce the total carbon emissions I create I would need to plant 295 more trees. It is something to think about for future reference.

-Mark Wagner

SLP: UNT Beyond Coal Campaign

For the end of the semester, service earning project I chose to analyze my evolvement with the University of North Texas Chapter of the Sierra Student Coalition's Campuses Beyond Coal Campaign. I began volunteering with the campaign at the beginning of the 2010 Fall semester - my Freshman semester at UNT. I have worked continuously with the campaign as the Media coordinator and have recently been appointed to the secretary position for the overall campaign. While I may have learned more about the ways in which campaigns interact with the media, I have also learned a great deal about grassroots / environmental movements and the way in which they operate such as recruitment, spreading the message / educating the general public, and pushing for change in higher offices.

Cronon debates the effects of such movements on the state of the environment as a whole. He tells of how Henry David Thoreau speaks on nature as being true and refreshing and very much needed for the common man. While Cronon states the obvious paradox presented by nature - that nature represents all things contrary to man and that upon man's entering into nature, nature can no longer exist in its ideal image. While this may be true based on modern large scale statistics. I believe environmental groups to hold the solution to this problem of separation. When people (environmentalists) push for respect of nature, sustainability, and the end of degradation and actually accomplish this then man will be on the same plain as nature, and thus able to interact with nature in a way that does not "kill" nature.

For my service learning project, I helpedout with the Beyond Coal Campaign at a tabling event. We were set up near the University Union. All volunteers helped in several different ways. Some people held signs and tried to get the attention of passers by, others gathered signatures on petitions and photo petitions, and some helped give out free snowcones! These events help to bring everyone involved closer together and ensure that the campaign stays strong. They also serve as extremely important ways to spread our message, raise support, and affect change in our community.

*Photo from the tabling event.

During mid-semester this past semester we help a larger event as part of a more humorous national movement. UNT Beyond coalers were chosen along with several other colleges to have an on campus march in their underwear. The underwear was donated by Pact - an organic underwear company. While spending the day in nothing but the bare minimum, volunteers gathered petitons, educated students, and marched around the campus in order to push for a clean energy UNT. The march ended in UNT's President Rawlins' office. As head of media, I filmed several parts of the event, the footage was later used by Pact in an Earth Day commercial. I've inserted the video below for your enjoyment.

In all, I love working with the Beyond Coal Campaign and wouldn't change anything about it! Except for how we get our electricity. Anyone interested in helping out with the campaign should feel free to contact me or come out to one of our weekly meetings - Sundays at 3:00pm at Art 6 Coffeehouse.

using nature or living natural?

Cronan and leopold are people that, from what i can tell from their readings, think like minded right along with me. The thing we call wilderness is a man made fabrication, would the very grass and trees that lie in our backyards not still be there if our place of inhabitance was not on the same acre lot? Our impact on the world is no lesser walking on the blades of grass of urbanized land than of the uncivilized, what we consider wilderness. "For many Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease,

has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial

modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness. Seen

in this way, wilderness presents itself as the best antidote to our human selves, a ref-

uge we must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet. As Henry David Tho-

reau once famously declared, "In Wildness is the preservation

of the World."' But is it? The more one knows of its peculiar history,

the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from being the one place on earth that

stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation-indeed, the

creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human

history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endan-

gered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encoun-

tered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it is a product of that

civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made.

Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural.

As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own

unexamined longings and desires. For this reason, we mistake ourselves when we suppose that

wilderness can be the solution to our culture's problematic relationships with the nonhuman world, for

wilderness is itself no small part of the problem." (Cronan) Sorry for the long quote but such an example of the identity of wilderness is impossible to be left unspoken.

"Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society however, has not yet affirmed their belief. I regard the present conservation movement as the embryo of such an affirmation." (leopold land ethic) Leopold is an outspoken person that knows the dangers of how we function no more than you and I, but is unafraid to voice the lack of aid in the deceleration of the decomposition of what we deem natural. Leopold later goes on to present the idea that we need to live off what the land provides us not what we deem the land is indebted to give us. His ideas suggest that we should let the natural succession of wilderness take its path as we take ours and when our paths cross, we should live with the mindset not to conquer what we can not understand. "Thinking like a mountain" (Leopold)

With that said I looked for a service project that was not a common run of the mill task. I decided to show the community around me that the very things they use that are acquired from new resources can be acquired from the land without detriment. I with the aid of my roommate Bryson went to our churches property to be built on in the near future, that is currently wooded, to harvest it of its natural and dead but useful resources. Bryson and I spent a day gathering and chopping up lain trees to be turned into useful fire wood to be given to the community and the people of the church. It was a hard task but I convinced Bryson to do this with me without the aid of a chain or a powered saw. Bryson and I spent the day working hard but were able to realize the beautiful things the wilderness "next door" has to offer. This realization came about because while working Bryson and I made conversation about how wilderness is not a place of intangibility but the idea of letting natural things take its own order.

From this project I learned that thinking like a mountain is not a hard task but a necessary mindset. People will go on to live life but if we slow our degradation in any aspect it would make the world of a difference!

i have a written note by the assosiate pastor of the church describing my project and will bring it to school tom... if your not there i will bring it on thurs for the final

Feeding the Hungry: One PB&J At a Time

Upon receiving the service learning project assignment, I was dumbfounded. Who did I want to volunteer for? What did I want to do - better yet, in between a full time job and school, when could I do it? It was then that I decided to start with the basic question: who needs help?

In class, we read an article called Food First: 12 Myths About Hunger which discussed the many misconceptions many people like myself have about the issue of world hunger. The most shocking truth that was revealed to me was that "abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,200 calories a day." (Food First pg. 1) Apparently that doesn't even include meat, fruits & vegetables. This fact caught me off-guard. If there is such an abundant supply of food, why are there so many people going hungry worldwide? The truth is, not everyone is given the same opportunities in life. A lot of it has to do with where you're born, what race you are, and sometimes - even what gender you are. The Food First article goes on to discuss the real reason - "...it results from underlying inequalities that deprive people, especially poor women, of economic opportunity and security." (Food First pg. 2)

So I decided to use the little time I had to make a big impact in lives less fortunate than my own. With the objective of using the knowledge and different perspectives I've gained from class readings, discussions, and life experiences to help better the world and the community around me, I gathered a group of friends, a few loaves of bread and two really big jars of peanut butter and jelly. Later that day, after all the PB&J's were made, I walked down the street from my apartment in Downtown Dallas with my friends and food in tow. It only took two blocks before meeting someone who would gladly accept a free PB&J, the man idling on a street bench thanked us greatly and smiled humbly. It seemed to take him by surprise that a few well-dressed college students were randomly handing out food, but he didn't question. It was apparent that the man had little but what he wore and the contents of his ratty old backpack. By the second and third person, we had begun to see a pattern. Seemingly normal people that were idling on benches and stoops out of the sun's reach, thanking us over and over. It really touched my heart that someone's day could be made with a free sandwich. 

 

One man asked us if we were Christians and college students, to which we all replied yes. He just smiled.

 

An excerpt we read in class called Stolen Harvest proposed the idea of Food Totalitarianism - "in which a handful of corporations control the entire food chain and destroy alternatives so that people do not have access to diverse, safe foods produced ecologically." (Shiva pg. 17) I really saw an example of this idea while walking around Dallas and interacting with these less fortunate people - the few that had food had bought it from the nearest 7-11 - because it was cheapest food around. However, none of this food was sustainably produced or even healthy. Corporations such as 7-11, McDonalds, and other fast food chains have so much buying power, and yet they choose to buy and sell things that are terrible for both the environment and one's health.  With this in mind, seeing the poor people's options made me very sad, and at the same time grateful for everything I have and am able to afford.

 

Another in-class article, Spoiled: Organic and Local is So 2008, presented this fact: "by 2050, 70 percent of the world's population is expected to live in or near cities." (Spoiled pg 3) At this rate, how many of those people will be hungry? The fact that the companies who control the largest amount of the world's food care the least about its effect on the world is a very scary thing. However, when interacting with those less fortunate that my friends and I were able to help, I realized that I was not only giving a meal, I was giving hope. It felt good to share my wealth and give back to those in need. It felt as if it were almost a responsibility.  But is it our responsibility to feed the homeless and the hungry? According to Food First, not necessarily. "It's not our job to 'set things right' for others. Our responsibility is to remove the obstacles in their paths, obstacles often created by large corporations and U.S. government, World Bank and IMF policies." (Food First pg. 3)

This service learning project not only taught me to be grateful, it taught me that those idling homeless people scattered around my community are just like myself, but with more obstacles in their way and less money in their pocket. It taught me that I could give hope with a sandwich, and that if I really want to help, the first step comes before feeding the hungry - advocating the right trade policies, the removal of the obstacles affecting those in need and bettering the quality of food thats made available to them. 

- Meredith Whittier

Keep Denton Beautiful

MY OBJECTIVE for this project is to clean the area in which I live, understand why people should take the time to do this for their community and how we can all benefit by serving our community. I would like to find a love for cleaning up my littered community.

Serving the community that you live in is a great way to help out and contribute to cleaning up the world. Pollution takes over more and more of our globe every single day. For my 5 service hours I collected ten bags of garbage from places I drive by and see everyday in my attempt to "Keep Denton Beautiful". Picking up the trash from these areas made me feel good about being able to make the area that I live in more aesthetically pleasing, and clean. While I was picking up trash on littered streets, ditches and highways I kept in mind the idea of "environmental justice". If we were all to do service projects such as this more than once a year, or even just whenever we see any garbage on the ground, then we would be able to make a difference in the world. In my opinion, picking up littered trash is a form of social justice that I can actively participate in every day. To me, social justice is holding up my understood responsibilities towards others and my community, involving cleaning the area that I live in. In the "Environmental Justice and Social Ecology" reading, the author describes some harmful effects that pollution can have on our environment, societies, and even our bodies. The most predominant idea in this article that I kept in my head was that doing acts like cleaning are our responsibility to society and the earth. Any way that we can reduce our ecofootprint is a step for a better future.

In the "Environmental Justice" reading by Figueroa, he presents a question that I put a lot of thought into. "How are environmental benefits and burdens distributed across populations?" (pg. 1). While pondering this question I came up with a few realizations about how we operate and interact with the environment. I have realized that we all operate with a somewhat restorative justice approach as to how we look at things. This restorative justice approach that we take is one where we understand and realize our obligations to right the wrongs that we have done in the past. With this obligation we strive to achieve repairs and reconciliation for these wrongs and reassurance that we will have a better, more beautiful future. Also, tied into this restorative justice is another widely accepted approach, distributive justice. This idea that we as humans should feel the need to compensate for others overuse of resources, because we know that some are taking full advantage and using too many resources, we can do our part in saving the planet by compensating and using less to somewhat balance the scale. This is probably the most prominent approach that I take in my life. I always try to use the least amount of resources possible to make up for my human counterparts that over use them. As Americans, we produce and consume so much that we are almost forced to place our environmental burdens on other countries as well. We make our environmental burdens be distributed to other populations simply because of our over consumption. There are plenty of ways for burdens and benefits to be spread to affect everyone. We can widely distribute environmental benefits with environmental justice, restorative justice and distributive justice. It is amazing to me to realize that our "unharmful" practices can easily be spread to other populations. We can affect the global environment, both helping and hurting, with practices started here in the U.S.

I have come to further realize that we are not one world divided into many separate nations, each pertaining to itself. We are just one world as a whole, and what we do to better the earth can spread like wildfire across to the rest of the world. If we, as individuals, can carry out the Green Revolution then we can provide this help to other nations. Though I only picked up trash around the area that I live in, I have helped to reduce our ecofootprint and participated in restorative justice and distributive justice to better the world. I have definitely learned that it is not out of my way, or a hastle for me to pick up trash in my path or clean the environment around where I live. I also learned that it is completely wrong to take this wonderful world that we are given for granted. Cleaning the environment is a great way to show thanks to mother nature for supporting us and putting up with our filthy lifestyles.







-Allison Williams