- List ten things that make you feel human.
- When I communicate with people and able to share my thoughts, ideas, and feelings
- When I make mistakes and realize I am not perfect
- When I am compassionate and empathetic towards others
- When I take care of people around me
- When I suffer and feel pain
- When I express love
- When I can do things I enjoy
- When I am able to create something
- When I can analyze various events
- When I am able to be individual and do things differently
2. Articulate your philosophy of engagement as it pertains to your work with the GSIF
- Why should I engage?
- How must I engage?
- With whom must I engage?
- What kinds of challenges, opportunities, and approaches should I care about?
- What might my epitaph read?
One of the primary reasons for me to engage is the idea of giving back whatever I have learned and discovered. I imagine everything I learn as a water filling up the cup. And in case if I keep filling up only my own cup; eventually, it may start overflowing. In order to prevent that I have to pour out water inside to other cups. That way water is not wasted and it has more use. That is how I think about knowledge, skills, and experience I get. Giving back to the society what you have learned and gained is an essential part of growing as a person. What is the purpose of becoming stronger if you do not make an attempt to lend a hand to people that are in need of help?
Our team’s project is based on the air pollution problem in one of Kazakhstan’s largest cities, Almaty. I am working on finding ways to solve the issue along with my team as I am concerned about the people that are not educated enough about the problem and the ways to protect themselves from the negative effect of pollution, Moreover, the government tries to cover the problem up, so that the residents do not get too heated up by the potential harms exposure to the polluted air can bring. That makes me think about potential solutions that me and my team could implement to address the issue.
While engaging I have to take into consideration various crucial aspects of the local culture. Being educated sufficiently about cultural elements and respecting them is an important step in initiating the collaboration with locals. Cooperating with the local residents of Almaty, we get to combine the outside knowledge brought by us with the experiential expertise of natives, and generate new sustainable solutions thereafter. However, I have to be critical about their viewpoints too in order to not be affected by the biases and bring a fresh perspective into solving the issue.
I must engage with people that have the same end goal as me. However, a similar end goal does not mean similar views. Instead, the team with different thoughts and perspectives will be powerful. Also, there are all the stakeholders of clean air in Almaty I want to engage with. Specifically, with the residents of Almaty as I have already previously said. Other important stakeholders are NGOs that are trying to cope with the problem of air quality on their behalf.
One of the potential challenges is the skepticism of stakeholders of clean air in Almaty towards our team. As our perspective one the issue might be different as we are not part of the Almaty city community, they might think that our understanding about the problem is flawed. This can possibly lead to misunderstandings between us and city stakeholders. I, along with my team, have to make sure that the communication between us is clear and coherent.
Among the opportunities that we are presented with is the chance to collaborate with other students that are also interested in air quality issues in Almaty. They are the students from Hong Kong who are similar to us in the way they are not familiar with the city, and also the students from the local colleges such as National Kazakh University and Alma University. They can support us with information resources that we might not have an open access to. I think this is a great opportunity to both boost our project’s efficiency and productivity, and get accurate results to build our solutions upon.
My epitaph might read the quatrain from one of my favorite writer’s poem:
“Oh, how I madly want to live:
To make all things immortal, dateless,
Give human form to all things faceless,
To incarnate the inactive!”