Blog Post- Week 5

  1. List ten things that make you feel human.
  • 1- Experiencing failure. All throughout high school, I was a perfectionist and put so much pressure on myself to make sure every assignment and task I completed was flawless. However, I noticed that as humans, we all make mistakes, and I need to accept and learn from the errors that I make.
  • 2- Constantly needing to be surrounded by people. The more I am around my family and/or friends, the happier I become. 
  • 3- Having unique interests. I have a particular adoration for baseball (specifically, for the New York Yankees), watching Jeopardy, going to the beach, listening to music, and many other things. These make me who I am and make me different from any other person.
  • 4- Experiencing emotions. Whether this means laughing uncontrollably at a joke or crying over the loss of a family member, how I assess my experiences emotionally makes me uniquely human. Every person has a different physical reaction to what they see and hear, and although two people may label a certain feeling the same, each person processes their experiences differently in their own body and mind.
  • 5- Wanting to make a difference and promote happiness, health, and the ability for people to live the life they want. Not only this, but wanting people to lead more sustainable lives to protect the state of the planet for future generations.
  • 6- Feeling awkward around people of high importance. For example, every time I go for a job interview, I always am overwhelmed speaking to a potential employer, and I over-analyze what I am going to say next. I think this nervousness is a common feeling most humans experience at some point of their lives. 
  • 7- Being clumsy.  Not a day in my life is complete without losing something, forgetting something, or running into something on accident. This is human nature. 
  • 8- Possessing my own opinions and being able to speak and act freely. 
  • 9- Getting annoyed by little things. We all get annoyed by different things from time to time. 
  • 10- Having needs and wants. Possessing the obvious needs of water, food, and shelter, make us all human, and we are all guilty of wanting unnecessary, material items as well.  

2. Articulate your philosophy of engagement as it pertains to your work with the GSIF. Specifically discuss:

 

  • Why should I engage?

Engagement shares our perspectives and insights with the public – it gives us the ability to inform and inspire people to make a real impact in the world around them. Collaborating with the public allows us all to work together and advance the project forward. This engagement will contribute to our overall objectives of recycling plastic waste into reusable products.

  • How must I engage?

I must engage with the most important stakeholders we are dealing with.  We must decide the best format to engage with these stakeholders in order to achieve our objectives and adapt to the methods that best suit our targeted groups to maximize the impact of our research. So far, the best methods of engagement we have seen are using Facebook group messaging, e-mails, and asking people to have meetings with us in their free time.

  • With whom must I engage?

We must engage with the most important stakeholders of our venture; as mentioned in my last blog post they are: Filipino junk shop owners and entrepreneurs that see value in trash, unemployed and low income Nanays that live on sachets, and NGOs.

  • What kinds of challenges, opportunities, and approaches should I care about?

 

  • We should care about whether or not there is a market for the products we are aiming to make 
    • Would people find housing materials made of plastic useful/willing to try them?
    • Is there a cement/cinder block alternative to these products we can replicate with using recycled plastics?
    • Do poor neighborhoods have problems with water availability? / Where do they get their water?
    • Do poor neighborhoods have problems finding building materials? / Where do they get their building materials?
  • We should look into the levels of motivation people have in the Philippines to actually fix these problems (We can build the machine and the various product suites, but it’s not going to work if they do not want to take the initiative themselves)
  • Opportunities: getting to meet stakeholders and understand their needs, testing products, teaching people about what we have done thus far, hearing feedback, and thus being able to readjust our project’s objectives and focus
  • Approaches: hands-on experience with diagrams teaching people how our machine works, community meetings, focus groups, surveys, online engagement

 

  • What might my epitaph read?

My favorite quote by Martin Luther King: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Here, he says that character/strength are best shown when someone faces a challenge – the challenge we are facing with our GSIF project is the global plastic waste problem, and we hope to fundamentally change how the world views recycling.

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