Overview
This week, I became more engaged within my team: I helped published 4 posts on social media for recruitment of the fashion sustainability workshop, as well as an event for Ocean day.
I also met with my those in the organizations again. We talked about digital strategies, and we plan to build a new website for the organization soon. On top of that, to prepare for an energy & sustainability workshop happening later in June, I was tasked with preparing a presentation for a partner NGO. I've mostly been working on that this week:
Response
In your community engagement project, how do you connect with community members? What kinds of conversations are you having, and what common cause do you find? Meeting new people and beginning a new project is exciting, but can also be stressful. As you set out on your community engagement project, what are you most concerned about, and what resources or tools might you use to address these concerns? Add in photos and videos as you like!
I connected with community members directly! For those within the organization, we connected through meals (cooking together) and talking about shared interest. I found that the co-founder, although being Parisian, actually attended university in Rochester. We talked about our shared experience of attending college in the U.S. I was also able to connect with others through talking about sustainability, Paris' politics, U.S. politics (I got a lot of questions about that), and other things (where to eat in Paris, travel tips for South of France and Italy).
I was able to also connect with the community that I am reaching—Chinese diaspora in Paris and beyond. As I am currently running the social media accounts for my organization, I've chatted with many people who were interested in our initiatives and events. This kind of connection, albeit more professional, was very meaningful to me; I felt that I was making a difference by directly guiding them on their journey of making a commitment towards sustainability. When attending the sustaintibily & energy workshop last weekend, I also connected with attendees through having an open mind: they all came from very different background, so I tried to be as open-minded as possible and paid attention to what everyone had to say.
So far, there's nothing big that I am concerned about. The only thing that is a little concerning to me is the language barrier. My organization will be hosting a few in-person event in June, where attendees and speakers will converse in French. I want to me as present as possible, although my French is quite bad. So, currently, I've been practicing. Instead of getting around in the city using English, I am translating everything I want to say on my phone and speaking it out in French. It takes so courage because my pronunciation is quite horrible...but I'll learn from practices.
Attached are some photos of my week! I also visited Reid Hall in Paris and said hi to the Columbia people there.