17 Rooms Flash Event
The 17 Rooms Flash Event brought local high school student leaders together on Monday, October 9th to discuss the United Nations Sustainable Development goals. These global objectives formulated in 2015 represent specific topics of human rights and environmental priorities in our community and across the globe. This gathering of youth leaders from Fairfax County Public Schools initiated a dialogue towards finding solutions for these topics that occur, to take action as students and to encourage increased advocacy as we plan for our future.
https://www.brookings.edu/projects/17-rooms/
The purpose of the event was to have a student voice as a part of these Sustainable Development goals. This generation is very different compared to the others and with the help and the minds of high schoolers, it gives a sense of hope towards adults and it will encourage more students to join.
SDG 14 – Life Below Water
SDG 14 focuses on the ocean and how to help assist better water management, the ocean is a sacred place that helps not just sea life but also humans and our ecosystem. SDG 14 is about keeping waters sustainable and healthy, these are the key to humans and the environment.
Problems and Solutions : LIFE BELOW WATER
I was assigned to goal 14 and within this group, we talked about why we chose this goal and how we wanted to help. We covered the topics of pollution because pollution is a big thing that occurs in our ocean, we also talked about the legislative side towards this topic. We wanted to engage with government officials about the oceans and the dumping sites, we wanted to create local dumping regulations and to keep watersheds clean and healthy. Educating people about this problem was also another big point of discussion; many people just think that picking up trash is something someone else can do and with this thought, people will continue to litter thinking someone else will clean it.
Water is everywhere and not many people think about the problems with life underwater until it actually hits them in the head. We drink water to survive, we need water to boil things, water affects our ecosystem and if we harm our waters anymore. Most people have never seen garbage floating in the Ocean, let alone a garbage patch miles long. Most people are unaware that the plastics we throw away every day are breaking down into microplastics found in the fish we eat and consequently in our own bodies. Most people are unaware of a recent study in Japan that discovered microplastics in cloud particles at the summit of Mt. Fuji is likely contributing to the drastic changes in our climate and weather patterns. In fact most people consume enough microplastic in a week to create a credit card.
We also talked about smaller things that happen in our oceans like coral reef bleaching and touching sea life. In Hawaii, they respect their ocean and set limits of what people can go near but in other places, they don’t care about that and think that coral reefs “won’t be affected” if they touch it. We covered topics of fish as well, hunting dolphins and sharks just for their fins to use for money or prized possessions.
Another thing we slightly talked about were their environments, with random things being thrown into lakes and oceans, they developed a way to live in these toxic waters. They’ve evolved to handle such conditions which aren’t healthy for them.
As high schoolers, you might not think there is anything you can do but that isn’t true. A small way to start is to recycle paper and save resources, this is a good way to start things off. Another thing is just picking up trash you might see along the sidewalks or near trash cans, picking up trash and throwing it away helps.
https://flip.com/s/cyEuP3H1yaya
In our community, in Mountain View HS, we are interacting with the school ICSV to talk about the 17 goals.
During the first quarter of the school year, we came together to do a cross curriculum session with Ms. Lee’s math class to discuss SDG 14 using math terms and expressions. The discussion was based on what was happening with SDG 14. The slideshow we created based on the goal, Life Below Water, represents the MVHS students work and their knowledge of SDG 14. We want to connect with other students outside of our class to talk about the goal Life Below Water and express the problems and solutions that occur within this goal.
