I can honestly say I really enjoyed all of my peers ISU presentations. It was incredible to see first off all the different issues our world currently faces, and also how everyone has slightly different opinions and ideas about them. For example, though it is pretty much a general consensus that lack of access to clean water is an issue, there were some excellent debates as to how this issue should be approached. Is desalination the right path? Should we invest our money in building wells, or funding innovations for better technologies? Is it even Canada’s duty to share our water? Is water a basic human right? All of these question sparked excellent debate. And this is just one topic. We heard from presenters that talked about climate change, armed conflict, disparity, and energy and all held unique debates and discussions. I believe that this is the most important thing that I learned during these presentations. That there are always more ways than you think to approach a given problem. Sometimes one will get caught up so much in one path that they will totally disregard a different way of thinking or an alternate way to achieving a solution.
Something else that I took from all the presentations is that there are almost an overwhelming amount of issues that plague our world. With the sheer number of problems I believe it is very easy to get bogged down and think that they can’t all be solved so nothing should be tried. It is wrong to assume that because a massive problem seems unsolvable that effort still shouldn’t be made. I love the story about the boy and the star fish. A boy is on a beach with thousands of starfish who have washed up on shore and who will surely die. An adult walks by and sees the child throwing starfish one by one into the ocean. He stops and asks the boy why he is throwing the starfish as it will be impossible for his to throw everyone of them back. The boy responds by throwing another while exclaiming “It mattered to that one”. What we can take from this story is that just because you are not solving a huge global issue, does not mean that you are not making a difference. We need to stop thinking of charities and organizations as THE solution. For example building a well in Africa won’t solve the water shortage problem, not even close. But to that particular village, it is the difference between life and death. Problems need to be looked at from a micro point of view. If enough micro problems are solved then eventually the macro problem’s solution will come.
I had never heard that story before, but it is so applicable to our situation. I do think that it is a lot easier to approach a problem from a micro level, but I think that it is important no to lose sight of the bigger picture. If we become so focused on the detail we might lose sight of the cause of the problem. Building a well will radically change the lives of that community, but it might not address the real problem of water scarcity.
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