I’m Margaret Campbell, a senior at Tualatin High, a nonprofit enthusiast, noodle lover, dog person and a new intern at Springboard Innovation. I started with SBI in late July and jumped onto the Planning the Forum Bandwagon. The August Forum on Sustainability and Social Innovation was my first public discussion with Springboard and my little mind was totally blown by the ambition, personality and achievements of each person that attended. I hope the other attendees felt the same way.
My personal thoughts on social innovation always begin with wild enthusiasm. Busy thoughts of massive achievement, inspiring yet non-fatal martyrdom, rickety airplanes, wonderful dinner party stories, foreign languages and orphans. However, then the part of me that hasn’t been influenced by Disney kicks in and I realize that the world is not a cartoon.
Social innovation, in my mind, is almost synonymous with nonprofits and volunteers. My faith in the corporate world is fading, and as a result I want to spend my future ‘doing good’ through the most effective route possible. Namely not for profits and NGOs. The world of nonprofits is giant, progressive and daunting for a beginner. And, fittingly, the problems they tackle are even more so.
Being Springboard Innovation’s intern helps combat the angsty teenager feeling of inevitable doom, and the August forum was certainly a breath of fresh air. Topics of conversation ranged from the definition of sustainability and social innovation to the idea of composting society and everything in it. The main points are already summarized on an earlier blog, so I’ll just toss in my two cents.
To me, sustainability seems to simply be paying more attention to consequences and behaving accordingly. Sustainability can be measured in a million different ways, through the wellness of government-citizen relations, corporate success, environmental health and economic sprouting and can be supported through just as many angles. Sustainability is also what we chose to do with our time to make sure we have more of it and that it is better spent. After realizing that environmental and social sustainability are so intertwined I’d think that the way to ensure that efforts are lasting is to work on both of them at once. They are two side of the same coin and, obviously, a 2D coin isn’t usable currency.
All in all, Springboard’s forums are awesome. It inspires me to know that there is a network of supportive, progressive and funny people out there who will show up and rock an event if you set it up. Sometimes it seems that the human world is heavily chained by government, cultural misunderstanding, status quo and legal systems. I feel that the world fights change with the mental inertia of almost every person living on its surface.
How to involve youth in social innovation is the topic of our next forum on September 8th. We’ll follow up on this blog with further information. Hope you can attend.
