Lilah Glick & Alexandra Soto
My name is Alexandra Soto, I’m going to be a high school senior in Puerto Rico. I aspire to eventually become a successful, respected, businesswoman. In order to get ahead in my future goals, I decided to appreciate my summer as best as possible. Therefore I enrolled in Summer Discovery at Northeastern University, a high school student’s enrichment program where one can take college credit classes or participate in a summer business internship. I chose the business internship part of the program and had the opportunity to volunteer at the Cambridge Energy Alliance.
The CEA is a non-profit environmental organization, currently working to reduce Cambridge’s carbon footprint. During the course of my internship I feel that I enriched greatly in matters of social and environmental awareness in addition to learning about business and marketing aspects of a company.
Being more energy efficient does not translate into just using appliances for less time, unplugging them when out of use, and using CFL lights; it’s a greater range of tasks one can perform in simple ways. During the internship, I helped canvass at some of the popular squares in Cambridge and surveyed a few Cambridge residents about their current lifestyle adaptations directed to energy saving. This way I learned that the world is changing and a great amount of citizens are adapting to these changes by doing the best they can in energy efficiency. Cambridge citizens have been insulating their homes, changing their appliances to Energy Star appliances, and adjusting the ways they make their homes more comfortable, in order to help the environment.
I am thankful for my opportunity to work at this internship because the CEA has taught me ways to become a better citizen while engaging in the business world. I saw that the little aspects of a business are actually the foundation for its success. For example, marketing is essential for a business to succeed and through brochures, information packets, and canvassing, a business can reach the public more efficiently. I highly recommend to anyone, to engage in an opportunity like this one because through the small tasks I was able to help with, I also became more compassionate and respectful of people canvassing and promoting information in the streets, because I was able to experience it from the other side.
While we still have great expectations of the upcoming talks in Copenhagen are all fine and dandy, it’s a rather elite event about a topic that touches us all. There have been efforts to democratize the discussion, such as the Museum of Science’s, “World Views on Global Warming,” but participation is still limited to those who can be physically present. Of course, you have another chance to do so at a follow-up session tomorrow (12/5) morning. MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence has also launched a new project, the Climate Collaboratorium, to allow people to share, vote on and discuss ideas about reducing emissions on a large scale.
