News

Symposium to bring new direction to sustainability

In print | November 19, 2009

Many environmental activists, from Earthlust members to Al Gore, approach issues of climate change from an intellectual perspective. They cite figures and charts to advocate recycling, use public transportation, buy hybrid vehicles and make other changes that will create a more sustainable society. The Awakening the Dreamer Symposium, to be held on campus Saturday, takes a different approach.

“The symposium addresses a more visceral motivation, not just an analytical one,” said Hannah Jones ’12, a member of Earthlust who plans to attend Awakening the Dreamer. Trained facilitators draw on spiritual connections, both among people and between humanity and nature, during the half-day symposium to build connections between organizations and work toward a sustainable society.

The symposium began with a group of North Americans who met the Achuar, an indigenous group in Ecuador, while visiting a remote region of the Amazon. Together they formed the Pachamama Alliance, a pact that recognized that the North American pursuit of progress and material gain has detrimental environmental effects around the globe. As part of their mission to work to preserve the rainforest through promotion of sustainability and social justice, the alliance holds symposiums year-round.

According to their website, “Through participation in this program, people are offered a new place to stand in looking at their world and their lives, and are empowered to formulate their own personal daily practices that contribute to the creation of a new dream for themselves as well as for our world.”

During the symposium, participants watch a series of videos featuring interviews with important political figures, such as Desmond Tutu, and footage of the natural world. Watching is interspersed with group sharing, guided meditation and brainstorming sessions.

Cynthia Halpern, associate professor of political science, said, “My son attended [a symposium] last year,” explaining that his enthusiasm got her interested. “I did one this summer, and I thought, ‘My God, we have to bring this to Swarthmore.’”

Halpern added that she plans to become a trained facilitator. The symposium also motivated her to begin writing a book about the political tasks of her own generation, from civil rights to the women’s movement, and how the current generation can draw on previous strategies in some of its own struggles, such as that for environmental sustainability.

“It’s inspiring. It’s fun. It gives people common ground for having a conversation,” she said.

Jones hopes that the symposium will be all these things. “It sounds inspirational and great and a mid-semester pick-me-up,” she said. Jones added that she looks forward to taking a step back from trying to achieve specific tasks, such as hosting 350 Week, in order to see the movement as a whole.

Hollister Knowlton, one of five facilitators who will lead Saturday’s symposium, got involved with the program after she retired. “I left my paid work because I wanted to do more work as a Quaker,” she said. Before retirement, she worked in science education and advocacy, spending several years teaching science in middle and high school, and later joined the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.

Just after retiring, Knowlton began working with the Quaker Earthcare Witness group. “I got an invitation to a symposium that said, ‘Are you interested in bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on planet Earth?” She attended the symposium and became a trained facilitator.

“We in North America are living in a way that is unjust to the rest of the world,” she said. “The symposium leads you from looking at where we are now so that we’re all on the same page … to asking, ‘What do we do from here?’”

While she primarily facilitates symposiums with local faith groups, especially Quaker meetings, they have also been held at universities, at national Power Shift conferences and “wherever people are interested,” according to Knowlton.

Stephanie Black-Schaffer ’12 is also a trained facilitator, although she is not involved in this week’s symposium. Over the summer she biked across the state of Massachusetts with a coalition of college students to canvass for 100 percent clean electricity and to offer the symposium.

“It’s an emotional journey to put it on. You have a lot of responsibility to make people feel the dire crisis that we’re in.” She added that it’s often difficult to convey urgency without discouraging potential allies.

Facilitating many symposiums has also impacted her own attitudes toward the environment. She said that every time she throws something away, she remembers a Julia Butterfly Hill quote from the videos: “Where is away?” Her quote addresses the fact that there is no such thing as away; everything that is thrown out must be incinerated or put in a landfill.

Around 50 people, both students and Swarthmore Borough community members, have already signed up for the symposium, to be held on Saturday in Science Center 101 at 9:30 a.m.