209: "Speak Earth" — Having Meaningful Conversations About the Environment
Part 1 of the Advocacy series
Tania Marien is an independent environmental education professional and the Director of Talaterra. Talaterra, which translates as “Speak Earth, is a network of independent environmental education (EE) professionals who contribute to lifelong learning in communities.
The network creates space for these professionals to have honest conversations and move their initiatives forward, introduce EE professionals to new partners, and help make environmental education a sustainable career. Currently, Talaterra oversees four initiatives — the Talaterra podcast, The Trail newsletter, EE Forward, and the EE Forward Summit.
OK, that’s Tania’s official bio. After talking with her for a couple of hours and studying what she does and how she works, I prefer to describe her as a “citizen for our age”: she’s a connector, an organizer, a contributor, a doer, a giver, and infinitely smart about how to approach the highly complex topics of the environment and climate change.
And because those topics are complex, they can, as she noted, be intimidating. And anything intimidating can lead would-be contributors to put their limited time and energy into some other cause, or remain on the sideline.
The antidote to pulling back is to take dealing with the entirety of those complex topics off the table and focus on doing something small yet meaningful. For me, that could mean not trying to immediately sell my entire NYC co-op of 500+ families on the idea of composting, for example, but learning about what I can do at my level. (See at right)
And in the process, I can look for others who might have the same interest. And then have conversations about a potential next step.
As Tania concludes, it’s all about reassessing advocacy on a very personal level.
Start slow to go fast?
Show Credits
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"Getting Unstuck" theme music: Original composition of "Allegro ben ritmato e deciso" by George Gershwin. Arrangement and recording courtesy of Bruno Lecoeur.