Healing the world in our generation
Cindy Lou
If you walk down to the lowest level of the Maggie Benston Center, you'll find a thought provoking display of old photos and newspaper excerpts. This display reveals a university very different from the campus we have today. The newspapers tell stories of mass student movements against unfair and repressive policies, with photos of protesting students packing Convocation Mall. Fast forward from the 1960s to the present and for years SFU students have not been able to meet quorum at the SFSS's Annual General Meeting. One may dismiss the movements of the '60s as a product of the social atmosphere of the era when an antiauthoritarian and counterculture attitude was all the rage. However, the question remains; why shouldn’t we be as active now as the students were then? Activism today may be different from what it was 40 years ago, but in light of all the pressing issues present in our world, the need for it is no less imminent.
Jeffery Sachs, economist and special advisor to the UN secretary general, writes in his book, The End of Poverty, “Great social forces are the mere accumulation of individual actions. Let the future say of our generation that we sent forth mighty currents of hope, and that we worked together to heal the world.” As university students, the leaders of our generation, are we striving to carry out this mandate?
Making a positive difference may seem to be a vague and daunting goal because of the commitment it requires. Perhaps the issues seem too complex and overwhelming for a student to solve.
Meet four students who have shown with their passion and dedication that it is possible to make a positive difference in the world, in the community, and on campus.
Clement Apaak, The Advocate in the hat
Intolerance is an issue close to Clement Apaak’s heart. His first lessons in this came from his experiences of growing up in Ghana in a family composed of two very different ethnic groups. Even as a young child he saw the tendency for the two sides of his family to disrespect, look down on, and sometimes be “just plain evil” to each other because of perceived differences. Apaak just couldn’t put up with what he saw. “Very early on in my own life I had to deal with issues of intolerance and so my way of dealing with that had been [to] try to advocate against it.”
From standing up against the intolerance in his own family, Apaak has expanded his advocacy to his hometown in Ghana and later to the international community. He arrived at SFU in 2001 to do his PhD in archeology, quickly became active in student politics, and was elected president of the SFSS in 2005. Although rapidly adjusting to Canadian culture, he never lost his passion for Africa. In response to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, where the government and Arab militias are massacring Darfur’s black African population, Apaak founded the national organisation, Canadian Students for Darfur. CSFD’s goal is to increase public awareness, fundraise to assist aid agencies working with victims of the conflict, and urge the Canadian government to take an active role in resolving the crisis. A year after it started, CSFD has grown to 16 chapters in Canada and is working in partnership with Oxfam to raise money for victims.
Can student advocacy really make a difference in international affairs? In answer to this, Apaak brings up the CSFD's successes. “Just Monday [May 1, 2006] there was a debate in the House of Commons. Many MPs were making references to Canadian Students for Darfur because we have e-mailed them, faxed them, [and] written to them telling them to take action for Darfur — and finally they took it to parliament.” He believes that Canadian students have many reasons to be concerned about the issues of Africa, “We cannot achieve equality and global peace if Africa is left behind.”
Apaak is the advocate with the big smile, easygoing manner, and the trademark hat. From his laid back appearance one would never guess how hectic his schedule is. What keeps him going? “A lot of people you don’t even know will benefit from what you are doing and you shouldn’t disappoint them. Over the years I have come to the conclusion that I have a role to play in the world and I am prepared to take up that responsibility,” he says.
Alex Nataros: Quitting the devil for a Fair Trade latte
With his extensive knowledge, analytical mind, and the occasional use of dramatic flourish, Alex Nataros has always been a persuasive speaker. In high school he took great joy in exasperating his classmates by defending Maoist communism and attacking baby-seal-loving PETA members. Today, Nataros confesses that his days of playing the devil’s advocate are temporarily over, as he is spending most of his time advocating for the issues he truly believes in, one of which is fair trade.
As the Oxfam BC/Yukon Youth Representative, Nataros’ main focus is to raise awareness among young people. “There’s nothing more rewarding than helping inspire youth to take action to address injustice in the world,” he says. During the summer of 2005 he spearheaded the first annual Food Security Symposium for Youth, where 75 youths came together to learn about arms control, the global HIV pandemic, and fairer trade.
One of Nataros' and his fellow facilitators’ goals at the symposium was to educate students on the necessity of fairer trade and help them to understand how free trade, while greatly benefiting multinational corporations, harm the economies of developing nations. Students learned about the devastating effects of unfair trade — for example, Jamaican dairy farmers are dumping thousands of litres of unsold milk because they can not compete with the heavily subsidised powdered milk pouring in from Europe. Similar situations are happening throughout the world and “for every dollar given to poor countries in aid, two dollars are lost because of unfair trade.” Nataros emphasises why it was important for Canadian students to be concerned with issues that take place far away and without direct effect on Canada: “Everything is interconnected. When a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the world, a tsunami hits the other. The interconnectedness of the global economy makes global awareness imperative. It is in our best interest for the dairyman in Jamaica to be secure and live a dignified life.”
Besides raising awareness amongst youth, Nataros promotes fair trade to the community by coordinating “Make Trade Fair” campaigns for local festivals, writing articles for university and community newspapers, and doing fair trade awareness workshops throughout BC. From the rapidly growing sales of fairly traded products in the market and their appearance on the shelves of businesses like Starbucks and Costco, it can be seen that Canadians are starting to recognise the Fair Trade concept as an important cause. In BC, Nataros is one of those forces actively changing the public attitude.
Monica Tang: "Jenny" from the block
In grade eleven, Monica Tang’s greatest concerns were getting good grades, graduating in the top 10 per cent, and going to law school. A year later however, her family moved from their spacious home in Coquitlam to a townhouse in the Edmonds area in Burnaby. This move to a different community marked a pivotal point in the development of her worldview. “[When I moved] to Edmonds I was exposed to a lot more economic and racial diversity than I was when living in Coquitlam. Seeing some of the extreme ends of poverty and wealth was unnerving and eye opening,” she says.
After her first year studying business at university, Tang was hired by a Burnaby youth employment center. She was first drawn to this job by its admirable vision: to reach youths with various backgrounds, but especially those who face barriers such as learning and physical disabilities, addiction, language barriers, or abusive homes. For four months Tang traveled through Burnaby giving workshops to young people on how to find jobs and how to protect themselves from exploitation on the job site. Through her visits to drug and alcohol addiction programs, youth drop in centers, immigration classes, and youth custody centers, she met many students from diverse backgrounds who were facing different challenges, “When you see all the different needs and struggles of other people, it makes you realise how very narrow your own views of human life have been.”
Since that first work term, Tang returned each summer to work at the youth employment center. Her work has become more than a job — it is an opportunity to make a difference in her community. One of the areas she feels most passionate about is visiting the open and secure youth custody centers. “I want to let the young people there know that there are choices and a future for them. Even if they made a poor decision when they were 12 or 14, it's not too late to turn their life around.”
From her experiences working at the youth employment centre, one of the things that bothers Tang is how different the starting line is for so many people, “In terms of making ourselves a future, I think we are all responsible for our own choices. But for some of us the dice [are] so rigged that they don’t have any choices.” Since her first year of university, Tang has switched from business to an honors degree in political science. She hopes to use her degree to make policy changes that will have long term impacts on inner city issues — especially those pertaining to youth. Combined with her strong beliefs in sustainability (she is the vice president of Oxfam at UBC), her goal is to work towards a more equal community. As a Christian, Tang says that one of her motivational forces is her faith, “Even though I’m only a 20 year old girl from the ghettos [laughs], I still have a responsibility to bring God’s vision into my part of the world.”
Richard Ly: Captain Orientation
Richard Ly and the Orientation Team at SFU can claim to be biting the so called “campus apathy problem” in the bud. In fact, Ly doesn’t see SFU as an apathetic campus at all. When asked why he thinks students don’t fill up Convo Mall for a common cause like they did in the '60s, he points out that “they still do at orientation!” With orientation at the Burnaby campus growing to an expected 2,400 participants, Convo Mall will be packed with buzzing crowds of first years participating in the “Mother of all Icebreakers” this August 26.
Ly himself decided to come to SFU partly because of his experience with orientation. Since his first year, he has become heavily involved and this year he is the orientation assistant (a.k.a. Captain O) who is responsible for the event at the Burnaby campus. Explaining why he thinks orientation is so important for first-year students, Ly says, “Your first time on campus, you’re nervous, and you’ve probably never felt so alone. And then all of a sudden you’re put into a group and you make friends. The thing that really resonates with me in orientation is the first step towards community at SFU.”
Besides having fun and meeting new friends, SFU Orientation focuses on building wider connections that will greatly help students as they feel their way through their first year. Two programs unique to SFU Orientation are the clan mentorship program and the newly-initiated professor mentorship program. In the clan mentorship program, eight or nine students from the same faculty are put into a group with an orientation leader who is also from the faculty. Throughout the first two years at university, orientation leaders often become a good friends and an invaluable source of peer-to-peer academic advising. Similarly, in the professor mentorship program, one professor is assigned to each clan. Ly explains that the goal of the program is to connect students and professors before classes begin, “So many students don’t use office hours, and they just remain an anonymous person in the lecture audience," he says.
Another aim of the orientation program is to encourage students to get involved on campus and to develop new skills. As Captain O, one of Ly’s responsibilities is to recruit orientation leaders and to teach skills such as professionalism, public speaking, and conflict resolution. He strongly urges his fellow students to get involved, “Right now, as a student, SFU is your community and all of us deep down do want to make a contribution to our community, either now or sometime in the future. You say you will do it, but why not start doing it now? If you start now, by the time you graduate you’ll have so many skills that you can take to your community.”