Monthly Donation Februari-May

First of all, sorry for not posting so much lately, just crazy busy with thesis work and project work etc.

I am participating in a course this spring where we are supposed to do a project in groups related to sustainable development. My group is doing a project related to food waste issues. I'm really excited about that, we have a great group and some good ideas flowing so I will let you know more about how it turns out in the end. If you happen to come across anything interesting on food waste and sustainability, please send it over!

Related to that I decided that as I will spend some time on this project and my monthly donation could be both time or money, it will count for the spring term. Additionally, I decided to finally get a membership in Animal Rights Sweden, I've been thinking about donating to them for some time but as a yearly membership was not so much I thought I'd get one of those. One of the questions they are working with is reducing painful animal testing, which according to new EU law is allowed with death as a consequence.

 Ivan  and Faro supported me in this decision.

Six Ingredient Challenge

This week's CTWW ( Change the World Wednesday) challenge is to buy only food that contains six ingredients. I got curious and decided to check what we have at home right now that contains more than sic ingredients. I was quite happy with the result, most of the things that contained more than six ingredients were in the fridge, mostly some sauces.

Here is a pick of them:

Additional to this we had some bread that contained more than six ingredients and a can of pea soup. Great, now I know what to not buy during the week, not sure if I will be able to keep all of the sauces out of the home forever though, even if I know it's quite easy to make your own salsa sauce for example....but I will sure think about it. We had some other mustard with less ingredients so that is easy to replace and the soy sauce contained a lot of ecological ingredients so I kind of think that's ok. From all of these I think the Worcestershire sauce was the one containing most weird ingredients, on the other hand we have hardly ever used it, wonder why we bought it in the first place....

The Yes Men

I am taking another CEMUS course in project management this spring and in class we watched the Yes Men Fix the World movie the other day. I think mostly for inspiration for our projects and as an example that even if you do fail in your project it can be a success in a way. The Yes Men are over and over trying to shock the business men in different ways but they mostly find out that they get another response...

I do recommend the movie! It's very funny and thought provoking. I could never ever do what they do but I'm secretly admiring that they are imposing such lies and acting so well in the situations they get themselves into. Even though the candle trick perhaps went a bit over the top...

I think I also liked the movie because Mike Bonnano and Andy Bichlbaum (the Yes Men) seem to be proper good fellows and keep their spririt high even when the world seem to be thinking in other ways than they do.

One Billion Rising

I participated today in a short one billion rising event. One Billion Rising is a campaign for ending violence against women. Our little circle took up the situation of women in Sweden that have to live on a secret address, usually because they live under threats from their men. It's also common that these women have children with them and they can't really lead a normal life as they are afraid of being found. The critic raised in the event was mostly against the fact that it is administrative staff that are deciding on these womens' rights to have their address erased in the public records. There is also different degrees of secrecy that are decided, from which the highest is a new identity. However, for getting any protection one usually how to be able to show that the threat is real by providing the authorities with police and doctor's records.

The second case we focused on was women's situation in Sri Lanka. It seems that after the was many women are in a tough situation, also many of them are now widows.

Some text from Unicef webpage:

Women in Sri Lanka also face many critical forms of discrimination, including gender-based violence and the ill-treatment of migrant women and their children. Apart from domestic violence, women are also subject to sexual abuse, putting them at risk of unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. 

An the official video of the campaign:

The Girl Effect

A video my friend shared on Facebook. Read more on the organization's work on girleffect.org and Why girls?

Climate Stereotypes

We had a really interesting lecture a couple of weeks ago with Marta Cullberg Weston, a psychologist who has worked with climate change and especially our psychological defense mechanisms when it comes to this issue, which prevent us from taking proper and strong action on climate change. I used to like psychology in secondary school and it was interesting to think about the psychological reasons for why most people choose to look away from the problems we are facing.

Here's the ten different types she described, can you relate to any of them? We also went through how to handle each and every one of these types, even though she said not to bother with type number 7, they won't change their mind!

1.The Climate Repressor: "Yikes! This is so scary! I cannot stand to hear more! I switch channels on the TV when they show programs about climate change”. 

2. The Climate Comfortable: "Well ... the problem will solve by itself. Nature has gone through a lot of changes before and besides scientists will fix it ... "

3. The life style addict: “I need my car to go to work. This is just scare tactics from the politicians. I am going to go on living as I have always done. This is not my problem.”

4. The Climate Cynic: "Yes, we're all going to die. We might as well have fun as long as possible. Besides, I’ll be dead anyway, when things start to crack".

5. The Climate Sad/Apathetic: "I wake up gloomy every morning. It is terrible what is happening with the earth. It is so scary! I cannot stand to hear about it anymore. I feel paralyzed”.

6. The status quo thinking error: “It is just impossible to imagine. We have never encountered this type of climate change before. I cannot believe it is true.”

7. The Climate Change Denier (CCD:s): " Climate change is a myth!” “It's about things other than human impact, I KNOW !"  

8. The Social trap denial:  “My contribution to the climate problems is negligible. Life on this planet has been going on for a long time. I am just taking my share of life goods as everyone else.”

9.The business leader defense: “My main responsibility is to my share holders. I have to give them a profit or we crumble. If I do not use the oil and gas reserves some other company will and they will prosper. That is the way it is.”

10.The Politician’s defense: "We live in a system where economic growth is basic. If I suggest changes that violate economic growth I will be voted out in no time and my colleagues will not take me seriously.”