photo by Afroza Amin

Hi, My name is Afroza Amin and I’m going to be interning with this great organization for the Spring 2010 semester. I’m an undergraduate junior at Brooklyn College, majoring in psychology and accounting.

I’m ashamed to say I’ve never really thought about sustainability issues as being such a big problem. However, a year ago I went back to my country Bangladesh, a country situated in Southern Asia. The state of poverty and overall environmental degradation in some parts of that country I visited, opened my eyes to the issue. People were struggling to make out a living but still not having enough to eat day to day. The roads were covered with garbage and people would walk by it without giving it a second glance, like its something they were used to. People are so busy struggling to live in such poverty, that they don’t really care what they are doing to their environment.

Once I got back to New York I did some research on sustainability groups or if there was any sort of action being taken for this state of Bangladesh. There wasn’t much being done about it and that got me thinking more about the issues. In the end, not really knowing what to do, I pushed the thought to the back of my head until I was in one of my psychology classes last semester. Professor Nancy Romer was offering a class for individuals who were interested in interning with sustainability groups.

Sustainable Flatbush was one of the organizations I was interested in because it was close to my neighborhood, so I emailed Anne. She replied back to me saying that they were interested in spreading the word to the South Asian community so my language skills would be needed. I was thrilled to hear this and after doing some research about the organization, I just knew this was the organization I wanted to intern with. The goals of this organization greatly interested me because it was the things I thought needed to be addressed in my country. Energy solution, zero waste, livable street; these goals of the organization are things I became interested in and would like to find out more about. All in all, I’m hoping to gain more knowledge so that I can help others in my community understand these things and become aware about what they can do.