Sustainability Innovators Lead Find Your Flock at The Hatchery
Activist Adrienne Maree Brown has a saying, "When you are forced to choose between a binary, you will choose wrong." The wisdom of this principle was certainly on display as CJ O'Brien and Julia Danko, leaders of Plastic Free Emory shared learnings from their efforts to remove unnecessary single-use plastics from Emory's campus and walked other student innovators through the process of creating on-campus policies for positive change. The Hatchery hosted them for their Find Your Flock program which elevates the work and experience of student groups on campus to equip students with innovation skills and foster connections between innovative students.
CJ and Julia offered a powerful case study in successfully navigating tensions through Plastic Free Emory. They have balanced education work with changing policy. They have maintained a posture of empathy while also forging ahead with real action. They have developed solutions that are not all or nothing but instead allow for all stakeholders to be considered. In addition to telling their story and demonstrating effective advocacy work, the Plastic Free Emory team also laid out how to get on-campus resolutions in a step-by-step fashion and made resolution templates available to other students working to make change on campus. The presentation was inspiring and practical!
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To learn more about The Hatchery visit Hatchery.emory.edu or email The Hatchery staff at thehatchery@emory.edu. The Hatchery is a unit of Emory University Academic Innovation.