15.1

Today I sent an email off to Mathis with my notes on his curriculum. Dr. Bill has access to this email but here's a short excerpt:

Empowerment: I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I think that the best way you can empower someone is through these three ways:

1) Show that their little day-to-day decisions matter

You biked to work today instead of drove? Yes, believe it or not that did help your carbon footprint. Here's how... etc.

2) Provide opportunities for growth

This can be as simple as showing how to make something out of common household ingredients rather than buying a new product. This could probably be the easiest one (out of the environmental movement it's probably gotten the most attention) once you decide how you want to approach it.

3) Support every possible way for success

This intertwines with what we were talking about during our Skype. Make the lifestyle change seem so supported and practical that success seems inevitable. We as humans, and nations as a consequence, are naturally relatively self-servant people. Our job is to make helping the environment a self-servant action. This is easy because in a way it is, if we overshoot then the negative effects on the human population is unbelievable. This could be through a variety of different degrees.

I also responded to Choate's email and taught Ari how to do the Hotchkiss project so that she can work with Far Brook.