List ten things that make you feel human.
-When I start crying because of frustration and pain.
-When I break out into laughter and not being able to control myself for a couple of seconds because of how swallowed I get within a joke.
-During meditation sessions
-Getting someone to laugh and smile
-Hugging someone I care deeply about
-When I hear birds chirping early in the morning
-When anxiety kicks in
-Uplifting someone through, for example, compliments
-Telling someone “I love you”
-Experiencing a sense of relief and comfort

Articulate your philosophy of engagement as it pertains to your work with the GSIF/ LVSIF? Specifically, Discuss: Why should I engage? How must I engage? With who must I engage? What kinds of challenges, opportunities, and approaches should I care about? What my epitaph might read?
My GSIF project is to address the air quality issue in Almaty, Kazakhstan. I
should engage because I could positively contribute to the issue that is tremendously impacting the people of Almaty. I could use my skills and strengths to collaborate with the locals and be an outside motivation source that serves as a push to the residents and NGOs to head towards change. To avoid my work and involvement being viewed as “saviorism” and belittlement to the people’s capabilities, I have to be careful that I show respect at all times. The way I plan on engaging is to have an articulate plan set up before I arrive in Almaty. I want to make sure that the people of Almaty view me as trustworthy and very knowledgable of the problem. My group is currently in aa process of writing a report regarding the specifics of the issue that the common people of Almaty may not be aware of due to the city itself not being very proactive on trying to address the outdated air quality monitors that are painting a false picture. I do not want to come off in a way that seems like I think I am superior and better-qualified for addressing the issue though. Those are clearly not my intentions at all.

When the time arrives to do fieldwork in Almaty, I want to be transparent with the local partners. I want to explain my plan in as much detail and the reasoning behind each component. I plan on engaging with the local environmental NGOs and residents that are directly impacted by the issue on a daily basis. They are the key collaborators because of how significant their role is in pressuring for environmental changes that go beyond the amount of time that I will be involved with this project. They also hold the least biases because their health will be of main concern, which is my group’s priority as well. In the United States, there is a lot of conflicts when trying to achieve impactful environmental change because of the people who have the power not going through the everyday life of the common people. Speaking from the experience of my neighborhood, the people in power do not truly understand the impacts of environmental degradation on our everyday lives because they never lived it and never really try to reach out. I have learned from these big flaws in the United States and want to avoid them myself when I go to Kazakhstan to implement an environmental plan.

Challenges that I will possibly have in my way of engaging is a language barrier. Although I will love to learn Russian, in reality, several months of learning Russian will not be enough to connect with the people on a deeper level. There will be things I want to explain and converse about, but language will keep me away from being able to. I am sure there will be a translator but there is nothing like being able to speak to the person yourself. Another challenge are cultural differences. Certain things in my group’s plan might cultural norms. One that my group has already discussed with a Kazakh native is that we are going to recommend that people leave their windows closed especially at night. We learned that it is part of their cultural norms to leave windows down to allow fresh air to “clean” the house. Unfortunately, this is not a great idea with pollutants piling up in the atmosphere and staying concentrated in the city due to a combination of wind patterns and the altitude of the city. It goes back to that idea of respect and trying to avoid any sort of invasion of the people’s ways of doing things. However, we need to make aware that this idea of leaving the windows open to clean the house is not actually true and may be causing more harm to people’s health. An approach I will have is to make it aware that I respect their ways of living and even share some of my personal cultural practices. I want to try to relate to them as much as I can which I feel like I can. There are so many people who have tried to assist my home countries, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, and I understand how it invading it can sometimes to have outsiders assist.

My epitaph would read as follows:

Alondra Lisseth Perez,
A selfless soul who always wanted to
make a positive impact on the people
who fell into the dark shadows.

7 September 2000→(Hopefully no time soon)