A Journey Filled with Sweat and Tears
One cold and windy evening in February 2013, we received a call from Dr. Leszek Sibilski, our professor of contemporary social problems at the University of Maryland. He told us about a unique opportunity to make a short video documentary at a World Bank event organized by Connect4 Climate (C4C) entitled “Right Here, Right Now.”
Immediately, we sensed it would be an interesting endeavor and we spontaneously said: “Let’s do it!”
We are two young Chinese women studying in the U.S. Yaqi Liu is an undergraduate broadcast journalism student. In her sophomore year, she decided to take Sibilski’s contemporary social problems class, which ultimately changed her life in an incredible way. She talked about the class to her friend, Marianne Ma, who was doing first-year graduate studies in Supply Chain Management at the same university. Yaqi was enthusiastic about all the social changes and movements that professor Sibilski mentioned in class and Marianne was inspired by her enthusiasm.
We decided to talk with professor Sibilski, asking him for opportunities to witness or even participate in current social movements. The trip to the World Bank headquarters was exactly the opportunity we were hoping for.
Although we did not have professional equipment or sophisticated video production skills, we were passionate, feeling that this project would be challenging and interesting. But we never thought it would raise our social consciousness, and perhaps even change the path of our lives as well.
A Priceless Experience
Our experience at the World Bank in Washington D.C on March 1st was incredible. The speech by Bank President Jim Yong Kim spoke about the power of connection. As he said, “We’ve said all the numbers again and again and again, but what we failed to do is actually connect.”
Being able to interact and network with people from all over the world, applying different strategies and approaches to tackle climate change, we suddenly realized how crucial it is for humankind's survival to connect with each other. Climate change affects everyone on earth and we need to work together to achieve our goal of slowing down global warming.
We had a refreshing interview with one of the singers who performed at the event. Gilbert Okusi, one of the group of four singers from Kenya, told us that they love singing songs about the environment and that they have traveled around the world to raise environmental awareness. “This is cool. We love it,” Okusi said.
Krystal Laymon, who studied Environmental Policy and Science at Columbia University told us, “The event was unique. It provided an ability to bring global environmental leaders together in a harmonious and musical fashion.
The event inspired us. Marianne, Yaqi, and professor Sibilski sat in his small office and decided to make our documentary part of a larger student campaign advocating serious action to combat climate change. We three made a perfect team, coming up with fresh ideas. Marianne would go to Yaqi’s apartment where we worked together late into the night. We reviewed our draft video thousands of times to make sure that every word, every clip and every second was correct, meaningful and that each flowed from one to the other in a natural way.
“I found it hard to open my eyes in class because of working on this project overnight in order to show a final version to our class so that we could get their suggestions.” Marianne said. She can hardly remember how many times she put herself in that situation, but she has no regrets. “You are a business student, why do you put all your time and energy into non-profit events?” her advisor and classmates asked. She replied, “More attention to social problems is exactly what the business world needs nowadays, especially in China. I want to apply business skills, independent thinking and the entrepreneurial spirit to social problems that call for private sector solutions.”
Yaqi is a journalism student, so she worked a lot on the video’s technical side. Every Monday, she went to a tutorial session with Marianne to learn from a professional journalist about how to film an event and correctly frame an interview. She did most of the cutting and editing on her own computer late at night, and Marianne gave valuable suggestions on every clip. We took details very seriously and spent hours checking spelling, names and grammar, until everything was perfect. We also asked advice from professors teaching journalism, our sociology classmates, and our friends and family. Our class held a screening every week to view our latest draft so that every student had an opportunity to participate in the project and express their opinions. “Every draft was much better than the last one,” she said, "We wanted this to be professional, beautiful, and inspirational at the same time so that people would like to watch it from beginning to end and think about the message we wanted to convey.”
Then, one night, we had a disaster. Around 3 am as we worked on the latest draft, our computer crashed. Because we had no back-up, the whole video project was gone.
We were shocked and shed many tears. “We really lost everything. Our project was gone,” we thought. But then we recovered, decided that it was no use crying and that we had to think about how to rescue the project.
So we pulled up the clips that still remained on our computer and put them in order. With help from our passionate and cool classmates, we were able to reshoot some of missing footage in the classroom and make a new video. Watching the final video played on a large screen in our classroom, and listening to suggestions from our classmates on what needed to be changed or added, we never felt more proud. Failure and accidents would never knock us down, while passion and enthusiasm are always there for us.
Connection Promotes Social Movement
“Climate change is our problem, it’s about ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren…” professor Sibilski said on his lectures. Protecting our environment is also a connection we make with our offspring, he argued. We cannot only be concerned about ourselves. We cannot push the problem of climate change to our offspring, waiting for them to pay the price. For those of us who are truly concerned about climate change, we realize that climate change is a significant social problem and will greatly affect future generations and we are in a constant quest for new inspiration and passion about what should be done to save Mother Earth.
Education outside the classroom
On the last day of class, Yaqi interviewed some of our classmates, who said they felt fortunate, because rather than reading textbooks and memorizing sociology terms, they had had a wonderful journey and changed the world a little bit by participating in the social movement in and outside the classroom.
“We had a textbook, but professor Sibilski applied it to the everyday life with a video project, and I really enjoyed it,” said Margaret Magnaye, a solid supporter of our project who recommended his class to everyone she knows.
“We had the opportunity to become a part of something important, and it made us to feel like we had a mission, and we had a purpose, so it was really nice to be in part of something that is benefiting others and benefiting future generations,” Ryan Toledo said. He applied the passion and knowledge he got from this class to influence others, urging them to care about climate change.
Sibilski said he likes to give his students practical experience in creating social movements. “The idea of the video production was to promote the problem of climate change to others who were not aware yet of its importance,” he said.
China and the World
As international students from China, we come from far away across the Pacific Ocean to the United States not just to study, get a degree and a decent job. We also shoulder a heavy responsibility as the new generation witnessing our own nation growing at fantastic speed in this inevitable trend of globalization. It’s well known that China’s economy is soaring, and while we are proud, we also are deeply concerned about the environment, society, and even the world.
There are astonishing facts about China's air pollution crisis; for instance, it was recently reported on Oct 21, 2013 that China’s smog emergency had shut down Harbin, one of northeastern China’s largest cities, which has 11 million people. Schools were forced to suspend classes, and the airports were closed. Also, Beijing experienced 2,589 deaths and a loss of US$328 million in 2012 because of PM2.5 pollution. When we noticed a World Bank study saying only 1 percent of China’s 560 million city dwellers breathes air considered safe by European Union standards, we are not comfortable. We are worried. If you ask us if we are environmental activists, our answer is no. We are only students, and we wish nothing but that our nation grows in a sustainable way and makes a positive contribution to the world’s environment.
Connection between nations has to be made to promote social movements, especially in a world that is fast moving and full of changes. We need to exchange ideas and wisdom in order to deepen the relationship between the Eastern and Western world. When it comes to climate change, one of the biggest social problems, there is little doubt that China needs the world, and the world needs China.
Reflecting on the pathway to development that Western countries have travelled, we can learn from it and create a better future. No matter what people say or do in their lives, all generations have one common dream, and that is to make our world a better place and leave our offspring a better future.
I would like to quote an old Chinese proverb, which says that "Time passes quickly like a white pony’s shadow across a crevice." So we must persistently stay on course with our social actions to really make a difference in the battle against climate change. Time passes quickly.
Lao Tzu, one of ancient China’s most famous philosophers once said that “A thousand mile journey starts with the first step.”
Will you start today and help us to finish this beautiful journey?
