Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Final Countdown

Less than 36 hours until our departure from Wisconsin!!

This is the start of our blog for Destination: Sustainability to Portland, OR.  Over this upcoming spring break week, you can follow our group as we will be posting about the non-profits we are working with, the amazing people we will meet, the experiences we will have, and the reflections on the service we are doing.

Our group has been meeting regularly since the end of January.  Through our weekly meetings, we have been learning more about what it means to be sustainable.  We have done research on ways we can be more sustainable in our own lives.  One of the meetings we went through a checklist of small things we do everyday that we can alter so that our actions are more environmentally-friendly.  We also had a prominent UWRF campus member in sustainability, Kelly Cain, come speak to our group.  The information he gave us was extremely enlightening and we learned a lot about how River Falls and our campus is working to be more sustainable.

Before we leave tomorrow, as of now our group has varying amounts of experience with sustainability.  Several members have worked with this issue before while for some of us this will be mostly a new experience.  It will be exciting for all of us to bond, learn, and work together with this social issue.  One of the things we are most excited for is to be gaining this experience in Portland because of its prominence and leadership in promoting sustainability.  We think our group will learn a great deal about sustainability and our own personal actions and bring it back to the River Falls and our own hometown communities.

At our last meeting this past Sunday, our group discussed our hopes and fears for this trip.  We hope to gain more knowledge about our issue through the service we will be doing with the ReBuilding Center and other non-profits.  We also hope to learn more about each other and to become a close knit group along with doing our service and seeing the impact we can all make.  Everyone hopes to gain a wonderful experience through service and to be able to bring it back home with us to implement in our lives and communities.  As for fears, we worry about the early mornings, the long car ride, crossing the Rocky Mountains, not doing good service, and being unable to see the connection with our lives.  We also fear putting service out of our minds when we return to River Falls due to busy schedules and other commitments.

We all hope you will continue to visit this blog throughout our week of service!  Keep an eye on us!

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