Telling the stories of movers and shakers around the world and inspiring action for positive change. 

What happens when you commit your life to making real change?

Ask Julio Solis, a sea turtle conservationist in Puerto San Carlos, Baja California, Mexico. In his youth, Julio poached sea turtles until a life-changing mentor shifted his perspective about his relationship with the ocean. Julio is now working to protect the sea turtles by running a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Magdalena Bayʼs natural resources, becoming a role model for his community and conservationists around the world.

Inspired yet?

Changing the world can appear a daunting task, but often it’s as simple as identifying the one thing that you are passionate about. In Solis’ case, it’s sea turtles, but we all have an issue or a cause that we identify with, a place that we can make a difference. That is the motivator behind MoveShake, a new character based film series that gives an inside look into the lives of people dedicating themselves to their cause and the personal struggles and successes that come with their journey.

Solis’ story premieres on June 7, 2012 from 7-9pm MDT as part of an online screening that also includes a Q&A with EcoSalon friend Shannon Galpin of Mountain2Mountain, another MoveShake story screening during the online premiere. Joining director Allie Bombach and Galpin in the Q&A session is Wallace J. Nichols, co-founder and director of SeeTurtles and founder of LiVEBLUE. A mentor in Solis’ life, Nichols was the man who originally inspired him to protect endangered sea turtles instead of poaching them.

Inspiring people to be movers and shakers in their own community, over the next few months MoveShake will continue to share the stories of individuals who are making a difference. They are not super heroes or billionaires or politicians, they are simply people that have found a cause that they are passionate about and committed to making a difference.

Want to take part in the MoveShake community? Check out MoveShake Unite, a place to share the positive change you see in your world everyday. Whether it’s an organic farm in your backyard or a community beach clean up, MoveShake is collecting visuals of positive change and posting them on the website. All you have to do is snap a photo on Instagram and tag it with #moveshake when you see:

• Something you want to make change in
• Someone making positive change
• Change already being made

Easy.

Now go forth and be the change that you want to see in the world.

Images: Allie Bombach

The post The Power of Individuals: MoveShake Launches to Tell Stories of Change appeared first on EcoSalon.

Climate Ride is a non-profit organization that organizes fully supported, charitable bike rides to support sustainable energy solutions, bike advocacy, and environmental causes. This is a special guest post from the Climate Ride NYC-DC 2012 participant Jenny Cooper of Environmental Defense Fund. 

Five days, four states, 300 miles of bicycle riding, and 200 hundred incredible people who are all working their tails off to address the greatest challenge of our time: climate change. With a perfect combination of mental and physical challenge, I couldn’t imagine a better adventure than Climate Ride, an epic bicycle ride from NYC to DC to raise awareness and funds for climate change solutions and sustainable transportation.

It’s the final day of my third Climate Ride. The ride yesterday took us through the hilly forests of southern Pennsylvania to the undulating landscape of rural northern Maryland dotted with horse farms. Today we’re pedaling 65 miles to the nation’s capital. Washington, DC here we come!

With nearly 200 riders this spring, Climate Ride is bigger than ever, drawing people from all over the country. We come from different geographic, professional, and cycling backgrounds, but two common threads tie us together: our dedication to finding effective solutions to climate change, and our love for bicycles (in some cases a newfound love!)

Growing up in Baltimore, Maryland and having family in New York, I’ve made the trek from DC to NYC upwards a hundred times in my life, whizzing up and down the I-95 corridor by train or by car. The architecture is largely homogenous and the sprawl rampant; I’m rarely inspired to stop along the way.

Riding my bike between the two cities with Climate Ride is the antithesis of that speedy and faceless experience. Back roads wind us through culturally rich and historically significant towns and across stunning river crossings once forded by Washington’s revolutionary army. We cycle past Amish farms, through state parks lush with trees and steeped in Civil War history, and end our five day adventure in our nation’s capital via a bike path along the Potomac river.

We’ve been biking 60+ miles each day, and each night we spend time as a group listening to speakers (nearly all of them riders) discuss their climate and sustainable transportation related work and explore creative ways to inspire and effect positive social change that will help avert catastrophic climate change.

From large scale sustainability initiatives at major universities, NOAA climate science updates, and climate change adaptation projects in developing countries, to bicycle infrastructure improvements across the globe, sustainable architecture, and climate literacy, the evening speaker series on Climate Ride offers an unparalleled opportunity to engage with people working on climate change issues from myriad angles. We push our physical abilities by day, and expand our brains by night.

Riding my bike connects me to the physical landscape, people, and culture in ways that cars simply can’t. As I pedal south from New York City, I feel the physical and cultural landscapes changing under my bike tires. The towering skyscrapers, potholes, and bustling streets of lower Manhattan shift to the rolling hills of New Jersey, which give way to the farmland and forests of Pennsylvania and the horse and buggies of Amish country.

As I ride through the urban jungle of New York City dotted with green spaces and chock full of high density housing, past the suburban McMansions of northern New Jersey, into Lancaster county where “car back!” becomes “buggy back!” and each house has its laundry hanging out to dry on a clothes line, I can’t help but think about how we design our public and private spaces and allocate resources to infrastructure improvements and construction.

Why do some people feel compelled to live in 10,000 square foot houses, while others are inclined to have 1,000 square foot abodes? Why are the small towns with mixed commercial and residential main streets so much more people-friendly than the strip malls of suburbia? Why are we converting farmland to housing developments scores of miles from supermarkets, schools, and other amenities? And why aren’t the vast majority of our roads built for people, rather than simply cars? Where are the sidewalks and bike lanes? How do these choices effect climate change, and how will our lives and the systems that sustain us be impacted by climate change?

We’ve built our houses, roads, factories, and bridges, based on predictable natural patterns—seasons, rain fall, wind, snow, heat, and cold. Climate change alters those natural patterns in unpredictable ways, threatening our natural and built environment, the very structures that sustain our lives. Climate Ride presents a rare opportunity, enabled by our bicycles, to confront these challenges and questions head on and brainstorm creative solutions. Hope to see you out on the road with us, pedaling our way to a sustainable future!

Learn more about Climate Ride and how you can participate and support the organization here. 

The post Climate Ride NYC-DC 2012: Pedaling for Sustainable Solutions appeared first on EcoSalon.

This past weekend, I spent four days in Telluride, Colorado. Although fancy resort towns aren’t usually my style, I was there for Mountainfilm Festival – a four-day, six-senses experience of art, adventure, culture and the environment. Tucked into a beautiful valley with snow capped peaks sticking into the blue sky, it was the perfect setting to watch inspiring films and listen to speakers who are changing the world.

As I walked into my final film on Monday morning, I was emotionally exhausted. With so many passionate people working on everything from social to environmental causes, my brain was spinning with ideas. Spending time in Telluride had been humbling to say the least. It was in this state that I walked into the screening of Waste Land. Filmed over the last few years, the documentary follows New York-based artist Vik Muniz as he travels to his native Brazil to develop his latest project at the world’s largest garbage dump Jardim Gramacho. He works onsite with a group of recycled material pickers, creating large scale portraits of them “painted” with garbage.

But it’s not the garbage that is the point of the film: it’s the human story behind it and the power of art to change how we think and feel. Being closely tied to the environmental movement, I had spent the first part of the film focused on the horrific amount of waste that found its way to this landfill, but by the end, the tons of trash were practically invisible to the story of the characters and how this project was changing them. Tears were streaming down my face as I watched one of the main characters leave Brazil for the first time to attend an art auction in London, where one of Muniz’s pieces was auctioned off and all of the proceeds donated to the association that works to protect the recycled materials pickers back at the landfill. Someone’s life had been changed.

It’s easy to say to ourselves things like “if only I had more time, I could do more to help my community,” or “if only I had a job that let me make positive change.” But it’s not about what we have or where we are, it’s what we do, and travel can help us realize this. Although the focus of this film was art, travel was an important vehicle for inspiring Muniz to initiate his influential project.

The film reminded me of one of the essential aspects of travel – that taking ourselves out of our comfort zone and to unexplored places, we see new things. And it isn’t just finding ourselves somewhere foreign that helps us to do this. The point of Waste Land is that Muniz returns to his home country, but sees it in a different way. Be it a voluntourism trip, a month-long European adventure or a business trip to Southeast Asia, there are new possibilities to explore at every corner, and often, those new possibilities force us to rethink our own lives when we return home, hopefully allowing for positive impact on our own ground.

A few years ago, I returned from a trip to Southeast Asia right before Christmas. Within one week I had gone from playing with Cambodian street kids and communicating via hand gestures, to sitting in a strip mall parking lot watching the dazed look of Christmas shoppers. I was blown away, to say the least, and made a mental commitment to never take things for granted. But even if travel inspires us to do better things with our lives, it’s done its part if it simply gets us to make small, everyday changes.

As I sat in the parking lot watching Christmas crazed shoppers walk towards present mecca, oblivious to the world around them, all I could think of were the potential NGOs I could start and move to Cambodia to help save the world. But saving the world starts at home, and starts realistically. I went home and told my parents they weren’t getting any Christmas presents. I donated money to a cause instead. I now work with conservation causes and help with communications, I write about issues that I care about, because those are the things that I know that I do well.

Everyone has something that they are good at, and we should use travel to inspire us to put those skills to good use. Vik Muniz isn’t a climate change scientist or a scientist that’s working on a cure for AIDS, but he’s an individual that knows that he can bring something to the table, inspiring and helping others and hoping that this trickles down to their own communities.

The next time you return from a trip, take time to reflect on what you’ve seen and been moved by. Then think about how your everyday actions can be influenced by that. Maybe you’ll take time to volunteer in a local homeless shelter, maybe you’ll teach a class to impoverished youth, or maybe you’ll encourage your community to stop using plastic. Whatever it is, don’t let your travel inspiration dissipate.

Image: jimdavidson

The post Using Travel Inspiration to Make a Difference appeared first on EcoSalon.