Stories Matter
After completing high school, I didn’t immediately come to The Netherlands to study what I am learning today. I began my university studies in Italy following my strong passion for [...]
Rising Stress from Rising Seas
The Emotional Toll of Climate Change Have you ever found yourself in a conversation with someone deeply concerned about the state of our planet? Perhaps you’ve had a [...]
Words Shaping Action
How Three Non-Environmental Books Influenced My Climate Activism In my previous blogs, I talked about how environmental issues have impacted me as a social innovator and person. But my journey [...]
Moving Beyond “Doom & Gloom”
Despite the increasing attention the climate emergency receives from media, institutions, and governments, people are still not engaging with the issue as much as we had hoped. The latest IPCC [...]
We Can All Be Hopepunks
I still remember the time during my first year at Breda University of Applied Sciences when we had the introduction days about the different tracks. I remember listening to a [...]
Blog 10 | Emma | Rear-view Mirror
Time for a pitstop. In this last blog I will temporarily stop my car and take a look at the path that I left behind me. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I have been constructing my own story over the last couple of weeks, months and years. Approaching the end of my beginning, my Bachelor in Social Innovation, I will check my rear-view mirror to look back on which route I travelled [...]
Blog 9 | Emma | There are two sides to every story
My parents always taught me to keep myself up to date with what is happening in the world. I value this greatly because I think it helps me to also create my own perspective on important matters. So, to gather food-for-perspective-thought, I check my NOS app to check up on the daily news. Last week, I did the same. I came across an article that stated that the Documentary of Michael Moore: Planet of the Humans, got deleted from YouTube since it violated author rights (NOS, 2020). Planet of the Humans… Sound familiar? [...]
Blog 8 | Emma | Friendship
22 years old. Often I hear people say: ‘count your blessings’. Honestly, I think I could go on forever. Looking back at my life, I have more than a thousand things to be grateful for. Up until now, I have had the best life that I can imagine. One of these things that I am extremely grateful for are my friends. Growing up, I’ve always had two groups of friends. One group of friends I met at dance practice[...]
Blog 6 | Emma | Exploring the field
The circular economy and ownership. Often, whilst interviewing in my project, I heard from respondents that they feel like they are a drop in the ocean when it comes to making change. Everybody that I interviewed shared the opinion that they find the circular economy important. However, when I asked them where the ownership and responsibility lies, the answer was never: ‘with myself’ [...]
Blog 4 | Emma | You don’t know what you got till it’s gone
We are in the middle of something that we have never experienced before. The corona crisis is new to all of us. This is definitely not the first crisis humanity experienced, think of the second world war in 1940 and the financial crisis in 2008. However, this is the first crisis that I am consciously experiencing. If you ask me, we do not even have to guess the ‘Dikke van Dale, woord van het jaar 2020’. [...]