{"id":1199,"date":"2020-04-29T14:41:09","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T18:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/?p=1199"},"modified":"2020-05-01T15:39:51","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T19:39:51","slug":"activists-in-the-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/2020\/04\/29\/activists-in-the-making\/","title":{"rendered":"Activists in the Making"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"student
FIT Hives began as a proposal at the 2016 CGI U<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fifty years ago, 20 million Americans from across the nation\u201420 million\u2014took part in the first Earth Day. That is one-tenth of the population of the entire country at that time. They demonstrated, marched, did environmental cleanups, and so rattled Washington that soon enough, we had the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act\u2014not to mention the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Inspired by an environmentalist senator from Wisconsin, Earth Day was actually spearheaded and organized by an activist graduate student recruited by the senator.<\/p>\n

I am reminded of that student activist today when I think about the FIT students who, for the past six years, have been chosen to attend the annual Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U)<\/a>. This is an international leadership development program for university students who are activists in the making\u2014young people determined to have an impact on some of the most pressing health, environmental, or societal problems confronting us today. It is led by former President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton. Highly competitive, the program requires student applicants to design a social impact project and demonstrate that they have the resources, will, and capacity to turn their ideas into action. So it\u2019s not surprising that the FIT students who conceived and developed our natural dye plant garden on the 9th floor terrace of Feldman were among those chosen in the past or that the two young women who designed our muslin-composting project were chosen as well.<\/p>\n

This year, FIT was represented with three projects created by six students, joining students from 113 countries and 320 universities, including the University of Edinburgh, where the event was scheduled to take place until the coronavirus intervened. The conference\u2014like so much else in our lives these days\u2014was virtual and was dedicated to the topic of combating COVID-19. But this \u201crelocation\u201d didn\u2019t in any way diminish the passion that students brought to their projects.<\/p>\n

The loss of our bee population, the impact of culture on creativity, and the fashion industry\u2019s harmful impact on the environment were the issues that our CGI U students tackled this year and I was impressed by the creative ways they chose to address them.<\/p>\n