Update on Project Activities
The first two weeks have been a great introduction to the team as well as the project. We spent time meeting with our community partner introducing ourselves, sharing our interest in the project, and our overall goals for the class. From there, we dove right into transcribing our first recorded interviews. This consisted of listening to interviews and verifying that the transcripts were accurate and respected the confidentiality of the interviewee. After doing so, we collaborated with one another to address key themes in the interviews and reflected on our takeaways. The second week we met as a whole group with Stephanie, our community partner, to go over the interviews we transcribed. We talked as a group about key themes and powerful quotes. We were also introduced to the next steps of the project and have started to discuss overall deliverables as well as objectives. Our next steps are to finish transcribing the remainder of the interviews and begin coding them for key themes and objectives. This will help us prepare for our upcoming control group. What We Observed and Learned Through editing transcriptions of recorded interviews, we noticed some very common themes that arose, even given the diverse backgrounds of the interviewee’s and their own personal journey navigating the pandemic and the recent environmental hazards. Many of the stories being told talked about the declining mental health of the interviewee’s and of the people in their communities and families. These mental health issues had to do with various factors, including losing jobs, financial stress, social isolation due to social distancing measures, language barriers, and added stress from taking care of children and family members. There was also an emphasis being placed on lack of information for underserved communities about the pandemic and resources for families that need help. Not only has it been challenging to find information that is reliable and credible for many of the interviewee’s, but the language barrier that many in the Bay Area face has prevented some of the interviewee’s from being able to understand important information regarding their health and safety. While these interviews all provided some common information about how people are navigating the pandemic, it is important to consider the unique situations that these people find themselves in to ensure that no group is left behind when planning for how to better prepare these communities in the future for catastrophic events beyond the current pandemic. Critical Analysis and Connection to Class Topics This week's reading and discussion seemed particularly connected to our group’s project. Two key themes that were present in both have been inclusion of diverse groups as well as oral histories. Our project has been primarily focused on interviews- each interviewee is different, with a different background and unique experience with both COVID-19 as well as climate change. This has allowed us to begin to understand the large variety of situations as well as the disparity of consequences in different communities. The Greenberg reading “What on Earth is Sustainability?” really captured a key theme of environmental justice which is sustainability for all. Listening to these interviews has allowed us to understand how sustainability in the Bay Area is not just exclusive, but is also harmful to certain communities. It has been a privilege to be engaged in recording the oral histories of these communities, as talked about in the reading by Baylor University. Being able to capture the feelings of different people and recognizing their personal experiences as a part of this bigger history has been very fulfilling and we are all excited to continue to learn more from them and to continue to develop our ideas of what it means to be inclusive in the pursuit of sustainability. Comments are closed.
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