On Wednesday, December 8, Earl Haig hosted its annual Global Affairs Conference. Welcoming speakers from a variety of not-for-profit organizations, the conference served not only to educate the approximately 70 student participants, but to provide inspiration and motivation for them to take action in solving the plethora of problems the world faces.
The conference itself was a tremendous success. The presentations were engaging, raising discussion and debate, and for all of the sadness that any crash course in worldly problems will inherently induce, an equal amount of hope was offered to overcome it. Students have written back thankful for the opportunity, describing the “many stories to share with [their] family when [they] came home” and their “[excitement] to become advocate[s] for issues [they] had never even heard of.” I even received a flattering, “Hey man, awesome workshops bro.”
Serving as Director of the conference, I worked with a team of five executives between May and December to bring the conference to life. It was a difficult struggle, but not in the ways that I expected. My initial philosophy seemed foolproof: “Enthusiasm results in action. If many people are enthusiastic about running and participating in the conference, everything will be alright. The greatest challenge will be in finding this enthusiasm.”
As we began to promote the conference in early November, enthusiasm was enormous. Throughout our time touring social science classes to invite students, over 30 brochures were taken. We certainly didn’t expect to get 300 registration forms back, but optimism was high.
Unfortunately, this optimism was not to last. As the registration deadline neared, we were hit by a barrage of discouraging excuses: “I lost my form,” “I can’t miss any more school,” “I need to sleep in that morning.” We only received around 50 forms, along with 20 volunteer sign ups. I was wrong: enthusiasm apparently did not translate into action.
I think this experience speaks to a larger point in the continuous fight to overcome student apathy about global issues. For the students who attended, the conference was a truly inspiring and educational experience. However, these 70 people are likely already some of the most informed and educated in our student body. What about the hundreds of other students who expressed their enthusiasm but did not follow through?
There seems to be a disconcerting gap between those who are passionate about world issues and those who would like to be passionate about world issues but are too busy, lazy, or discouraged to put in the effort such passion requires. The latter group of people forms a vast majority, and it is they who must take action in the coming years if the world’s most urgent problems are to be addressed before it is too late.
How can these students be convinced to get out of their seats, put a bit of schoolwork on hold, and advocate for whatever causes strike them as important? Attending the conference would likely have done just this, but forcing people to attend seems against the spirit of the event if not outright unethical.
One potential solution is to make it extremely easy for people to become involved. I find this idea unrealistic at best. Any serious progress on any serious issue requires some amount of time and effort. Organizers can spend many hours setting up situations where youth can “save the world with a click of a button”, but this accomplishes nothing – the burden of work has simply been shifted.
If anything, campaigns like UNICEF’s recent drive for Facebook profile pictures to be changed to cartoon characters to “raise awareness” about child abuse delude students into thinking that they are making a difference. How much awareness is something like this actually raising? What is the intended effect? It seems that this kind of “slacktivism” simply decreases the likelihood of participation in any forms of more serious demonstration. “If saving the world is this easy, why even bother leaving the house?”
In organizing the conference, we booked speakers, arranged locations and setup, and provided breakfast, but left the basic commitment of registering and being present to the participants. While this seems like a reasonable compromise, it necessarily leaves out the group of people who would benefit most from a crash course in world issues – those who like the idea of saving the world but not enough to have registered.
I suspect that a more practical solution to this problem lies somewhere in students’ desires to try new things. If the idea of protesting a governmental decision or volunteering at a youth shelter is presented as an adventure rather than as a job, it is far more likely to be taken up by those seeking new experiences. It is frustrating to suggest resorting to somewhat dishonest strategies, but I think that the global situation is too dire to sit back and hope for a spontaneous uprising of unprovoked youth activism.
We frequently hear of wonderful things being done for the world by students. However, so often in my experience, such things are organized and participated in by a painfully small group. In our attempt to build a foundation of youth engagement in world issues, we have the tools – thought-provoking and inspiring events such as the Global Affairs Conference – but lack high-quality resources – students who are genuinely willing to fight to change the world. We cannot expect such a foundation to be very sturdy.
If we wish to make real progress, we must do what any good builder does: we must look at what materials we do have available and improvise a solution. While doing so will undoubtedly take a great deal of time, effort, and creative thought, we cannot lose sight of the fact that there is hope for a brighter future.
