Redesigning Our Future

Campers Learned Many New Skills at RMI Programs at Environmental Camp Today, with the Rocky Mountain Institute, students learned how to have nice dialogue skills with others when having a disagreement. They were told not to just talk; listen to others. Give reasons why you think your idea is better, and then hear the other person out. These were just a few tips the Rocky Mountain Institute gave to the campers. The students were then thrown into to simulations of a disagreement and were told to use the skills they had just learned about. The first simulation was that two people were members of a council and they had to decide where to spend their  pretend one-hundred thousand dollar grant. Different groups decided on different ways to spend the money. The second simulation was that two people were stakeholders around a lake. Different stakeholders wanted different things from the lake, and the six different stakeholders had to compromise on what to do with the lake and h...

How to Drink the Environmentally Friendly Way By Emily Pieper On the first day we arrived here at Redesigning 2012 , each of us received a plastic cup (seen in the center of the photo above) to use throughout the week. What's neat about these cups is that they are reusable, and they can hold any kind of drink. This was a great idea, because every hour in America approximately 2.5 million plastic bottles are thrown away! Not only do these nifty cups help us stay hydrated throughout the day, but they allow us to be environmentally friendly in the process. The insulated, reusable drinking cups were donated for the "Redesigning the Future" summit for high school students by Rowan Regional Medical Center .

Communicating Your Initiative: Workshop by Amanda Lanier   By Emily Pieper Y esterday w hile I listened to Amanda Lanier teach us about effective environmental communication, another light bulb lit up in my brain when she showed the slide pictured below. Instead of just interpreting the word "resolution" as the ending or solving of a problem, I found myself looking at it in a whole new way. To me the word suddenly looked like "re-solution". Photo By: Emily Pieper <> N ow, maybe this doesn't seem like that big of a change, so let me explain my crazy thought. What I started to think was that "resolution" could also mean to come up with different ways to "re-solve" a problem. S o, why does this matter and why should you still read this? W hat Amanda explained to us was that today in the 21st century, thanks to new technologies that develop every day, we have thousands of ways to communicate our ideas. Right now as you ...

Catawba College and the Environment By Emma Sophia Catawba College in Salisbury North Carolina is a great place to hold an Environmental Summit for teens. The college's atmosphere and its facilities are great for young people with hopes and dreams of creating change in our future. Not only does Catawba have a beautiful 189 acre nature preserve and a 300 acre wildlife refuge, but it is also continuously working to make the rest of its campus more environmentally friendly. Many of the newer buildings on campus are LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. There are also many things that go on during the school year that are driven by inspired students and faculty who care about the environment There are a few clubs on campus including Catawba Outdoor Adventures and Environment Catawba Outreach, which both work in different ways to prove that the outdoors and the environment are important and should be protected. There is also a program called "G...