Future Blue: Amplifying Student Voices

June 13, 2018

Hi, everyone! My name is Lily and I am Bow Seat’s Future Blue Intern this summer. I’m a rising sophomore at Cornell University where I study environmental and sustainability sciences. This summer, my main job is to shape Bow Seat’s Future Blue Alumni Ambassador program; I will also be interviewing some Bow Seat alumni, helping out at community events, and writing blog posts that will highlight my summer work!

I initially became familiar with Bow Seat when I participated in last year’s Ocean Awareness Contest through my high school AP environmental science course. My essay, titled “The Demise of the Rainforest of the Sea,” can be read here.  It was inspired by my time at The Island School and the research I did on the effects of ocean pollution on coral reefs.

I have always had an innate love for the environment, but it became a complete focus and passion of mine during my semester abroad at The Island School, located in Eleuthera, The Bahamas, during my junior year in high school. There, I was immersed in a sustainable lifestyle and my life and studies were centered around the local environment.

It has been two years since my semester ended — and although it seems long ago, so much happened when I was there: from spending 48 hours on a beach alone with no food, to having marine ecology class underwater. Those 100 days were abundant with big and little challenges. I will always remember learning how to pee off of the side of a sailboat; witnessing firsthand the impacts of plastic pollution and invasive species on native populations and the benefits of a marine protected area; learning about food scarcity in math class; and catching a small black-tip shark on a fishing line for research.

I came home to Massachusetts excited about what I had learned and committed to sharing my new knowledge with others. Throughout my senior year in high school, I engaged myself in many environment- and advocacy-related projects. I really enjoyed sponsoring a resolution article regarding fund provision for green transportation at my local Town Meeting. Its successful passage revealed to me the power of youth taking action—and the feasibility of local change, despite the pushback I received from some of the older and more conservative town members.

Other projects involved outreach within my high school community, advocating issues such as plastic bottle use, green electricity, and recycling. These opportunities helped me to not only see the importance of advocacy, but of amplifying voices (especially those of students!) that can be used as a force for good.

This is why I am most grateful for this opportunity to be the Future Blue Intern. I am excited to reach out to Bow Seat alum and contribute to a platform that can amplify our voices. I love the vision of Bow Seat, to activate the next wave of ocean leaders through creative advocacy. I totally admire the commitment of Bow Seat’s Founder Linda Cabot to utilize art as an effective way to communicate the importance of our vulnerable oceans.

Since I began work as a Future Blue intern, I’ve already had the opportunity to reach out to other interested ocean conservationists! Last Sunday was the New England Aquarium’s World Oceans Day celebration, and I was able to help (wo)man Bow Seat’s table. It was so fun to talk with people as they came up, walk around to look at the other tables, and run into my sixth grade science teacher who I haven’t seen in five years! I’ll share a little more about WOD in my next blog post. Stay tuned!