Ecology and Education Summit

The past few weeks have been pretty busy, thus the absence of posts. I shall try to make up for it now! :)

The work I've been doing at my internship has nearly all been related to the Ecology and Education Summit that the ESA was organizing. Well, last week the Summit took place! Wow! Talk about a busy weekend!

It started with me arriving at the National Education Association building at 7am on Thursday the 14th. We were planning on opening registration at 7:30am, since we had over 200 registered participants. However, lots of people showed up early! We had barely started setting up registration when I turned around and there was a line. The whole Thursday I wasn't able to listen to any of the speakers and panels because the other intern (Meghan) and I were busy solving small crises. Little logistical errors that were bound to happen. And sorting out registration, as some people thought they had registered and hadn't, or registered twice, or showed up to register on-site, which we weren't doing. Needless to say, it was an insane day!

Friday I got to show up a bit later-at 7:30am. :) Friday was still busy and crazy, but I was able to participate in the Summit and bit, which was nice. I learned a lot and was able to share a lot too! It was exciting that people looked at Meghan and I like equals, not just interns or students. They valued our ideas and made sure we were heard. It was a great group of people!

Then Saturday I didn't have to be at the NEA until 8:30am, which was nice. By this point I was utterly exhausted, but Saturday was an amazing day! The Summit had ended, and only about 60 people were invited to participate in the Saturday Action Plan workshop. It was neat because Meghan and I were basically just participants at this point, and we didn't have to worry about anything but participating in the Summit. We spent the day discussing ways to improve environmental literacy in the US, and I was actually one of the 2 people working on a legislative action template/plan. I, along with a small group of people, will develop a template for communities to create legislative changes in their communities, states, and even federally. Pretty cool! I'm super excited to work on this project!

Overall the Summit was a great experience, and it was awesome to see the results of my hard labor come to reality, and go off with only a few minor problems. And I learned a TON in the 2 days I was able to participate!

Jen