Saturday I went to a discussion entitled Sustaining Change as part of the Creators Series hosted by Tomorrow Unlimited. The talk featured Jennifer Leonard, designer/journalist and co-author of Massive Change, and Sarah Rich, journalist and editor at Worldchanging.
In refreshing presentations that conventional power point users should take notes from (using simple slides, single quotes and vibrant images), both Leonard and Rich told of their own personal histories and what influenced them in their work. Leonard began in journalism as a music and arts critic, then moved into design. Rich has a fashion background and moved into the green sphere through exploring the world's relationship with food. Today both are focused on solutions based journalism, and strive to tell success stories and innovations rather than focusing on the problems people face.
On the topic of Sustaining Change – or keeping the enthusiasm for green going after the buzz wears off – a large part of making that possible, Rich explained, is to educate people. Not just in a conventional sense of expanding K-12 education around the globe, but also creating an awareness of the relationships between people and their environments or surroundings.