The Greenpeace Experience
Visiting Greenpeace Southeast Asia has been the most exciting thing that our group has done. Even though we drove through a very rocky and challenging organization hunting, we were able to get the chance of interviewing, what we did not expect as a really accommodating international group.
As our group decided on giving focus on environmental issues and concerns, we settled on inquiring into three agencies/organizations. They were the MMDA, Greenpeace Southeast Asia and Center for Environmental Concerns. We immediately sent an email to MMDA at first, but was unfortunately been rejected by their server right away. So we did call all possible telephone numbers and ended up all hanging for nothing. We did not expect that calling them will not only lose lots of phone credits, time and hope; but also leads us to greater chance of cramming as we now walk through dangerous narrow edges while counting up just a few weeks before the submission.
After contemplating of what probably we should do on our future, we finally took the other possible chance which is Greenpeace. We emailed them, called them several times and waited for almost two weeks for their confirmation. Thankfully we were able to contact them earlier since the available person for them to provide interviews has a very limited time and full-packed schedule; considering that most of them go through lots of office works and activities outside their premises.
As we all have the plans being polished, there comes another challenge, our transportation. Their office is located in Quezon City, far away from where we all live. We all do not know how to commute there through jeepneys and buses. The fastest way to go there is through riding the LRT and the MRT. So we all agreed to push this decision, which is also our last resort setting aside the facts that MRT is dangerous and sometimes could not be trusted, and that this is the first time for most of us to ride the MRT. Pretty exciting, right?
We arrived to our destination alive and with flying colors. From the Vito Cruz LRT Station, we have resisted the urge to jump out of the train until we reached this MRT station called GMA Kamuning. From there, we walked along EDSA until we found transportation going through Tomas Morato. We were a bit early for our appointment. It was eleven o’clock when we reached their office. So we decided to have our lunch to kill off remaining hours.
We had the interview with Ms. Abigail Aguilar, a toxic campaigner of the organization. She sufficiently answered all of our questions and was even delighted to tell how Greenpeace started from its old Canadian roots. She explained mostly everything well that we didn’t even need to ask further questions about Greenpeace. The office tour followed, showing how most of their workers deal literally with the environment. The organization has also allowed us to film inside and take pictures of their work area. At the end of the interview and the tour, Ms. Abi gave each of one of us a little notepad and a sticker as a souvenir and physical advertisement for one of their current programs in their detox advocacy. Of course, we had our group picture together with Ms. Abi in their mural located in their reception area.
At the end of the afternoon, we all went home happy and fulfilled for we have successfully visited and interviewed an organization.
This visit opened our senses on how different organizations (like Greenpeace) are contributing ways on protecting and preserving the environment. This project definitely helped us gain further realistic and logical insights on how we, as individuals should work for it too: to correct and rectify our mistakes and to help the environment grow and survive healthy for our future. As we all know, we are all part of this society. Keeping in our minds that we are all equal in experiencing the benefits and the burdens of this living civilization
-- Diaz
Additional Personal Experiences
For me, these people like Greenpeace is really working hard to make our environment better. So people should be more conscious with their little action for worsening the environment. It was a nice experience visiting Greenpeace and learn a lot of information.
We went through a lot of trouble to be able to visit the organization and I honestly just wanted to get it over with. It was hard to get their permission and it was hard going there. They say that all will make sense at the end of your troubles. It was true. When we reached Greenpeace, I was honestly happy that we would get to meet the people who work there. Visiting the organization gave me a lot to think about the environment and how I could help change it for the better.
Our Greenpeace trip really opened my eye to a lot of things. The compassion of the Greenpeace members really inspired me to be more concerned about our environment. Knowing all the things they've done to make our planet cleaner made me want to make a difference too. I hope that with our video, we get to inspire more people to make a difference.
After my visit to the organization Greenpeace, I came out with a new perspective on how polluted the environment really is and how implementation of new laws does not make society change in a flash. Awareness is key to change that is what I noticed when we started interviewing people from Greenpeace. Their campaigns usually use social media and magazines to make people more aware and take notice issues that are not popular to the public. Some issues that surprised me where ones that involved the ocean or products involving the ocean. Problems that are not massive enough to be popular with the public because it is not worse enough, are being taken care of by Greenpeace before it has a chance to worsen through time. Overall, Greenpeace has made me realize that there are problems yet to arrive involving the environment that havent been taken notice by the government and that if we do not take action it could worsen not only our for our generation but for future generations as well.
Catch more here!: http://cg115v1-0.tumblr.com/post/132721879361/greenpeaceextras