“Infiltrating” the community
After our team did their basic at first research about problems that might concern oceans and seas, we knew wanted to make an impact, to achieve something that actually mattered. The thing is that our research was mostly focused on global ocean-based issues. We knew we had to start smaller. A lot smaller. Thus, we decided to go local and interview a pool of people that we believed that would provide us with the appropriate insight.
As the matter was being discussed we realized that the first step was to aim better and target specific groups in order to take the answers we were looking for. After a brief meeting we decided that it would be optimal to talk with people from the center of Athens but also with people who actually lived near the sea. For the second category we chose Elefsina as our starting point. Other than that we wanted to mostly listen to the younger voices of the cities, without of course diminishing the knowledge older people could enhance our research with.
We interviewed 30 people in total being consistent to our vision, thus giving more attention to students but also listening to parents. We realized that we received some very interesting insight from teachers and tutors in general.
At the end of the week, we had so many answers and points of view to examine that we started feeling lost in a sea full of unorganized information. Each member of the team was assigned with the task to investigate the answers and the points of view of each target group we reached (these being teens/students, their parents and parents in general, teachers and elders).
Two days later, with all the needed information and insights gathered and organized neatly we came to the realization that elder people have started showing a selfish reflection towards environmental issues in general. Regarding the parents, they seemed concerned about the fate of life below water but not enough to actually do something about it. On the other hand, teens and students were really passionate, but the main issue was that they didn’t know what exactly was wrong and how they could practically help. Teachers and tutors ,being in the same page, stated that they would gladly act in order to help.
It was high time we formed our challenge and start thinking of ways to make the world a better place, begging with its aquatic environment.
