[Educator's Stories Series]: Interview with Hani Sadati

1. What are the environmental issues that you are concerned about as an educational leader? 

While my environmental concerns are more than this, but the followings can cover some of the main ones:

·     Climate Change

·     Deforestation

·     Increased Carbon Footprint

·     Overpopulation

·     Loss of Biodiversity

·     Natural Resource Depletion

2. What do you think educators can do about these problems?

I think environmental issues should be shown to the people in innovative ways and not just as some statistics on the papers. These methods should help people to touch the issues by heart. Here I would like to mention two examples of these innovative ways:

·     Creating various types of visual presentations.

·     Organizing participatory workshops that encourage people (students or the community) to think and reflect on environmental issues I believe educators (both in Environmental fields or other fields) should 

As an example, that can cover both of the above mentioned methods is Docademia.This is a new and fascinating platform, which uses independent documentaries to bring theoretical social justice discussions to life in classrooms. The platform offers a perfect solution for talking about well-being through real-life storytelling via short documentaries. Each documentary film follows with a tailored curriculum to discuss it with the students and an opportunity to have a Live Q&A video chat with the storyteller/filmmaker. 

Using Docademia, documentary videos on environmental issues can be shown to the students and at the same time they have opportunity to participate in a discussion with the storyteller/filmmaker and also the professor/educator. 

3. Please share any activities that you have participated in to promote sustainability?

I believe one of the best ways of promoting sustainability in the community is to integrating different aspects of it with the everyday life. Therefore, in my everyday:

·      I have adopted vegetarian/vegan diet as one of the ways to contribute in environmental sustainability. In this way, food and all occasions that connect with food can initiate discussions about vegetarianism and its environmental impacts.

·      I try to share environmental concerns, news, and events on my social media. 

·      I seriously consider separating the recycling materials from other garbage.

·      I try to take care of water (with not wasting it) as one of the valuable and limited resources in the world. 

·      In different occasions I might get engage in environmental related discussions with friends.