The article "IMPACT! – It’s about doing more good," is written by Alyssa Kostello, alumni of the IMPACT! Sustainability Champions Training program, and is adapted from her blog originally published on alyssakostello.wordpress.com.

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Back in May I was at the IMPACT! Youth Conference for Sustainability Leadership where I spent four days with 175 other youth from across Canada. You may be wondering “What is this conference you speak of and what’s it all about?” IMPACT! is put on by The Cooperators and The Natural Step Canada – they have a two day program as well as the conference. It is meant to bring together youth who want to be leaders in the sustainability movement, give them leadership skills, communication skills, and tools to start big or small projects. To empower us and build community.

Now, you’re probably also wondering why I am telling you all about this. This program and conference has made such a big impact (pardon the pun) on me and my life, and I feel it’s wrong to keep all this information to myself. I need to work on my communications skills, and I hope I can make a difference in others lives by sharing information (even though it comes a little late). Maybe after reading this you will feel empowered, inspired, hopeful, and start conversations with others about sustainability. Or maybe at most you’ll think ‘good for you Alyssa and all you guys who did the conference’ and just be happy that somebody is doing something.

I wanted to start with the question of what is sustainability, as it means so many different things to so many people, but that would take a lot of time. I will say that there are three main pillars of sustainability: social justice, environment, and economics. Economics and social also including self sustainability (happiness and financials). Every component is necessary, interdisciplinary, and connected all the time. If one pillar falls, they all fall.

So, the conference. We got to meet and learn from so many incredible and inspiring people and I want you to know who some of them were! Col. Chris Hadfield, first Canadian Commander of the ISS, David Miller, the CEO of WWF Canada, Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Coordinator of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, Ken Melamed, former Mayor of Whistler, Chad Park, Executive Director of The Natural Step Canada, and so many more!

The conference was structured that we start talking about big ideas and then narrow in on and end with personal actions. We were split up into focus groups that encompass all the big ideas and came together to share our conversations, observations and learnings.

I even wrote a rap song about it and performed for everyone – this is a small snippet:

Today we’re talking big ideas and the problems that we face
Finding the solutions, also finding our place
We’ve extensively explored the changes we can make
Grasping all the tools to use, the steps that we can take
Business models, cities, tech, poverty
Water, food, climate, consumer responsibility
These all have common threads and themes, they’re connected to each other
We all need to engage and lead so we can save our mother (earth)

My focus group was citizen engagement. We decided that citizen engagement is creating relationships, making connections, getting people interested, active, and talking about issues. It’s about building community. We need to start thinking beyond ourselves, stop thinking me and now, and start thinking us and future. We talked about what prevents citizen engagement and that we need strong leaderships to help fix those problems. Leaders above all need to be competent and speak with sense. Leaders need to intervene with respect and positivity so they don’t alienate or guilt people.

Education came up a lot. What I learned in the education conversation was that although it’s very important to educate youth, it’s also extremely important to educate the older generations. They are the ones currently in charge and more immediate change can happen if we can educate them. But as I said before, intervening must be done with respect. We need to honour our elders and draw strength from their insights. We also need to keep educating ourselves, whether it’s formal education or informal.

What I observed is that everything involved building community. I believe that’s first step no matter what. We can’t do much if we’re not all working together and it’s our responsibility as a community to take care of each other. We affect change in the relationships we form by listening to and serving others.

One thing that stood out for me was something Elizabeth Thompson said: “Maybe youth voices aren’t being heard because they let themselves be ignored. Youth need to agitate more.” I think this is true. We can definitely speak up more and work harder but I think we’re scared and too comfortable with our lifestyles. We need to do things for ourselves now, and not wait until we’re ‘old enough’ or until someone else invents what we want to be doing. I also think that it’s because we’re scared. We think about the big picture, a world full of problems and get overwhelmed. This is why it’s good to get specific and work on a smaller level. Every personal choice we make, makes a difference (I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Me to We movement). From buying foods with less packaging, to composting to starting a recycling program at work. It might seem small and insignificant but it makes a world of difference.

We also need to look at our skill set and what is the best way for us to affect change. I’ll use myself as an example – I am passionate about a lot of different issues. One example is I think all buildings should be more energy efficient – but I don’t know anything about construction and zoning laws etc. I went to school for theatre. I am a writer and I have organizational skills. So I started a theatre company that focuses on sustainability and am looking to make change in the theatre community and inspire audiences through an art form.

Our keynote speaker was Chris Hadfield, and oh my what an amazing man! He spoke about how it’s important to have an ideal goal in life and that it’ll help you make all the little decisions. And it’s ok if you don’t make the goal, it’s important to celebrate all the little successes along the way. Your long term goal doesn’t have to be a lifetime goal. You can have a series of long term goals to fulfill. Chris also spoke to community and leadership – to surround yourself with good people and understand that impossible things can happen if everyone is unified and has a common enemy. And it was again mentioned that leadership is competence and you need to give yourself skills just in case (he learned Russian 5 years before being offered to command the ISS, just in case). But it’s also important to give your team skills, build understanding, and different ways to communicate. Visualize failure and what you will do when it comes. The thing he said that I think got me the most exited was that artistic ventures are how you make the biggest and longer lasting impact. (Right on!) To hear an astronaut tell me how important art is was incredible! It’s rare to hear people who aren’t in the arts speak to how important art is. There was a second person over the weekend who spoke to this as well. I struggled for years on how I could combine my two passions of theatre and sustainability, as the two didn’t seem to fit and both communities don’t seem to know much of each other – but it’s been getting clearer and clearer for me.

The conference ended with a closing speech from Chad Park. He started with these two sentences:

Believe, be passionate, and powerful. Know that you are right.

Listen, be empathetic, and polite. Know that you are wrong.

He told us that we need stamina, because this work gets tiring. To recognize you’re not the only one. And that this work is not about doing less bad, it’s about doing more good. And the thing he said that really opened my eyes and changed my perspective is that we should be humble and have humility because we’re all learning our way into the kind of society we’re talking about creating – it’s never existed before.

I was blown away by everyone’s intelligence, competence, passion, and wonderful projects. There were 175 of us but there are there are even more across Canada that didn’t attend. Our community is growing and that’s the first step. A week after the conference I hosted a potluck for friends who were interested in hearing about the conference, and other Vancouver participants from the conference came as well. I was surprised and happy to see that the same questions and conversations were coming up and that by the end everyone wanted to create action plans and next steps.

I feel that over all what I am left with is that we need to know ourselves, know our skills, and start small with the future in mind. In building community and networking we discover we’re not alone and we are actually quite powerful. That we need to work for others and not ourselves. I am left with hope and confidence. We are headed in the right direction.

I’m going to end this with sharing what I learned about myself: I learned that I need to be a more confident leader, that I need to face the fear that holds me back, and I need to find rigour in relation and self sustainability. I want to support others and be part of projects that aren’t my own, I want to learn more about politics, I want to keep learning, and I want to share with my community.

Thanks for listening. If you want to follow me as I learn, fail, and succeed in my projects, then follow my blog and add me on twitter…or whatever :p @AlyssaKostello  @NOWTheatre (www.nowtheatre.ca).

Written by Alyssa Kostello
Source: alyssakostello.wordpress.com/

Learn more about the IMPACT! Sustainability Champions Training program, or contact us at jsnider(at)naturalstep.ca or 613.748.3001 x5230 to get involved.