It is the 2nd day of the conference already! I made even more friends today that came from all parts of the world with a common IB connection, which I have never imagined would happen before! So today, we started off the day by listening to John McCall MacBain where he talked about sustainability and climate change happening in the world. He talked a lot about the common problems that we are facing right now such as inadequate solution to non-renewable resources (nuclear power not being the ultimate solution since it still produces pollution), increasing methane from natural processes that harm the atmosphere more and more each day and also the things that can help to tackle the problems such as solar power, green investment on brown industries and carbon cycle improvement.
However, what was really intriguing from his session was that he mentioned about Sweden and how they are being so sustainable in the infrastructure. Sweden has been reducing carbon emission by reducing excess heat and producing biogas to be used as vehicles fuel. So basically, Sweden has been significantly successful in being an excellent example for other countries around the world regarding sustainability. The first ever train that runs on biogas is in Sweden and most Sweden's buses run on biogas too! This inspires me a lot since Sweden makes it seems that there is a hope for sustainability in a country and there is still a chance for a country to reduce its carbon footprints quite significantly. However, when I heard about how Sweden had made improvements like that, I became somewhat skeptical about the possibility of my country becoming like Sweden seeing the corruptions and all. I realized, if you would like to be sustainable, it comes from yourself not from other people's opinions or perspectives. Sustainability starts on each individual in the country.
Although at first skeptical, I finally saw hope in making Indonesia a more sustainable country as MacBain followed up his information with tips to make sustainability achieved in a smaller community, such as the school. I guess starting from small community such as the school, still gives a large hope for the country as everything starts from zero and there is nothing impossible to make Indonesia a sustainable country. His solutions varied from starting to install solar power, changing the value of the people in the community to making a system to help the community makes the environment greener. Hearing this, I am confident that even small changes starting from my own school can make a positive difference in the community and hopefully expand to a larger community such as the whole town.
Afterwards, I had a session called "Defining the Global Engagement Standard" in which I learned that to be sustainable there are different barriers to be faced in each area such as culture clash, the decision making system and rivalries in the area. The speaker told us that, as I mentioned above, even plans for sustainability that have been carefully moderated are not going to succeed without having the culture of the people changed to be more positively acceptance of the plans and the plans need to be done by the community themselves. Decisions, especially regarding sustainability, also must consider all factors (as mentioned above) and elements in the community for them to be accurate. Learning this, I came to realization that there are so many challenges to be faced to make sustainability happen everywhere and that is why I am trying so hard to find the best solution via the CAS project to help achieve our common goal to make sustainability happen. The GAT meeting was a big help for this as it encourages us to think outside the box what is the problem faced, how to tackle that and what is the more advance idea to promote sustainability in our local area.
For the concurrent session a bit later in the evening, I had a session called "You've Done Your Homework" where we discussed about how to implement the sustainability idea to the community using social marketing. This session really enlightens me a lot since I now know that to promote the cause, you can do it in many different ways possible to make the task easier and quicker to be achieved. The good thing about it is that, I feel like if I failed in one method to promote the cause, there are still many ways to do it thus preventing us from being unmotivated thinking that there will be no chances for sustainability to happen in the targeted area.
Later at night, we had an activity called "Singing in Choral Harmony" in which Hussein Mohammed (if I am not mistaken), a singing enthusiast that got inspirations from the culture of Kenya, taught us to sing different melodies from many different religions and cultures in unison. I was completely impressed by his way of thinking on how different cultures and religions can stick together without any discriminations toward each other, and I was really amazed how he could incorporated it using group singing especially when we came from different parts of the world with different set of cultures and religions. And his method seemed to be working well seeing how beautiful we sung the melodies together! Hussein made me believe that even though we are seen as 'different' by each other in terms of cultures and religions, if no discriminations are involved and only positive attitudes are adopted by people, any goals could be achieve easily just like how Hussein successfully led us, who each has different practices from another, to sing pieces of each other's beliefs without having to doubt which one is wrong or right.
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