Greenpeace Organizing Term's Resident Tweeter Shares Her Experience

Posted by: lindacapato1 | 15 Jun 10 | 1 comment

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Written by Tabitha Skervin, a third year International Relations student at Michigan State University and current Greenpeace Organizing Term student.

The earth is God’s creation and my home, so I firmly believe we have a responsibility to take care of it and all the life that lives in it.

It is on that ground that applied to do the Greenpeace Organizing Term (GOT) for this summer in Washington, DC. The environment is something I’m passionate about, and I want to know how best to convert that passion into practical action with an impact. I want to have the ability to help lead this movement of young activists into a more sustainable and healthy future.

I first heard about the GOT at school from a couple program alumni.

Hearing their stories and the reflection they had on the experience made me realize the GOT was essential for me to do.

Unlike a summer internship, I will spend the next ten weeks getting trained in techniques that most activists have to learn the hard way, and will be able to experience how it feels to be on the front lines of a campaign. What’s more is the experience that I would have here will prepare me to do the same work with the same drive and the same passion elsewhere in my life!

This first week has been intense but exciting! Our supervisors Larry and Christine are really cool, very experienced activists, and you can see that the other student activists I’m sharing this semester with are on the same level of commitment as I.

We focused mainly on team building and understanding how to work well together this first week. They covered what kind of leaders we were individually, what tendencies we may have while working in groups, and what to look out for when working with others with different leadership styles.

On another level, these exercises not only help us work as a team this summer, but allow us to visualize the kind of mindset we need to get into when building a strong and effective team at home. One lesson that we’ve learned so far is that in order to move forward, you have to “meet people at their level.” See what they are passionate about, what their strengths are, and how you can implement them to better the group. This week has been long but I cannot wait to start the training and campaign work in the weeks to come. I am so thankful and so blessed to be able to be here and I know I’m going to go home ready to fight the fight!

I’ll be tweeting about the Greenpeace Organizing Term and all of our work throughout the semester through the @Gpsemester Twitter feed!

Follow me at http://www.twitter.com/gpsemester!