The day started with a nice breakfast (I can't believe I was up so early) and then lots of workshops, here's the description of the one's I went to:
-Better World Books: In this informal drive, 4 presenters talked about Better World Books and how to do drives on campus to get books to donate to them and sent to places like Africa, SouthEast Asia and Latin America. Better World books sells used books that they collect on drives to donate to places around the world. Their system is made to make the most funding available possible to places of need, plus helping by being environmentally aware. I liked this presentation a lot and now I will check their website whenever I want to buy a book instead of checking Amazon.
-Faces of Homelessness: Three ex-homeless people gave a talk about their lives and the point that got across was that homelessness can occur to anyone. The first speaker, James, has a college degree, worked at NASA for seven years, had another good job in government for thirteen years and then all of a sudden went into a bout of depression and after going downhill ended up losing his family and his home. Someone seemingly living the American dream became homeless. The second speaker also voiced how she went to becoming homeless from one day to the next (she actually had 48 hours to evict her house). The third speaker, Kyla, was only thirteen yet spoke eloquently. She's the daughter of the second speaker and I could tell the room was in awe at how clear and eloquent the young girl was. The workshop made a big impact on me.
-End World Hunger: This was a workshop led by Oxfam. I was interested in seeing what they would do as I donate money to their organization. I thought the presentation was very good and I had fun working in a group to discuss how to raise awareness doing a series of events at our campuses (we were dispersed in four groups of between six and eight people).
-Film Screening "The Education of Shelby Knox". I was very interested in seeing this movie, specially after reading it had been selected at Sundance (Sundance is a great film festival). The movie follows Shelby Knox for three years in Lubbock, Texas in her fight to put sex-ed in public classrooms in Texas. It was very surprising to me (even though I grew up on the border with Texas) to see how much hate there is in those parts of Texas against homosexuals and how close minded they are with respect to sexual education. Texas is a big state and my city (El Paso) is quite far from Lubbock (later Shelby would tell me that Eastwood High School in El Paso has good sex ed). There's a lot of interesting things to reflect on this movie. One is how there are many people that are very good (you could see people working for a cause), two is that you can change people's minds with facts, the best example is how Shelby's parents because of their love for their daughter were very open to the information and besides being very conservative and Republican were supporting Shelby all the way. The documentary was very good and I got a lot out of it. I also enjoyed the Q&A session with Shelby as she had some more information to give us and some closure on some of the things that have happened since.
It was a long day as it started very early, but it was great, I had a lot of fun and I felt that I learned a lot.
-Quique, Dartmouth College
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