Growing up, I’ve always viewed the water crisis as something I shouldn’t concern myself over because it wasn’t an immediate problem in my life (as terrible and self-centered as that sounds). I have to admit that it really wasn’t until this group action project that I saw the detrimental impact that losing out on one crucial necessity for survival had… Read more »
Currently, the US has a lot of different ways of getting oil: we are drilling ourselves (mostly by fracking) or we trade from various trade partners throughout the world. I want to highlight one of the main problems we have from getting imported oil from foreign countries. Recently, Trump decided to cease trading for oil from the Middle East due… Read more »
As we progressed throughout the quarter, I knew that the Action Project was going to challenge me in ways that I’ve never been challenged in my academic career at UW that’s already spanned three years. For one, this was my first group project that essentially spanned over an entire quarter. As such, the number one takeaway I ended up having… Read more »
I’ve always had a political and economic emphasis when it comes to how I analyze course material. With that being said, I knew that addressing trade for my group project would be useful in examining how political economy relates to food and the environment. As a result, I was excited to find a group of peers with a similar sort… Read more »
Up until this quarter, I had never taken a class that forced students to step outside of the classroom to complete an action project instead of simply writing about it. Many times, we are tasked with finding possible solutions that addresses one of the many problems that are occurring within our community. Yet, the reality is that implementing these solutions… Read more »
Water is literally the essence of life. It is the most important substance on earth for us humans as our body needs the nourishment to function. Despite such importance, we rarely pay attention to it until our body starts to show signs of dehydration—the feeling of thirst. The intake of water is essential on a regular basis, but we usually take… Read more »
(see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/19/the-apple-industrys-strange-savior/ for image cred) For our project, we chose the topic of food waste, and in particular apples in the Seattle area. We made a children’s game inspired by Candyland that showed the (linear) path an apple makes as it is grown, shipped, stocked, and eventually eaten by consumers. We called it “Wasteland.” It is mostly geared toward waste on… Read more »
The culminating action project was essentially another novel experience of this class. I have participated a lot in community organizing because I started a club this fall focusing on indigenous rights and watershed protection. We have been working with different clubs and organizations around the area and I have gotten a taste for the bullshit that is community organizing. It’s… Read more »
Our action project consisted of making a website that is informative of what food waste is, facts about food waste, how we can make personal improvement to help this matter, and actions that we can take to make this issue more aware to the public and larger community. Our group thought that taking the informative and educational approach to this… Read more »
Group projects are typically a source of anxiety and apathy in the minds of college students. However, the idea that our group project had the potential to make an impact on the students at UW, the community in Seattle, and discuss the political implications of a global problem was enough. We faced a series of roadblocks, yet we were able… Read more »