Terry Tempest Williams Student Dialogue: "Young people, communication, and sustainability"
10/30/2009 - Posted By FGCU Announcements

Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, will return to FGCU for the Terry Tempest Williams Student Dialogue on November 4, 2009. The Dialogue seeks to raise awareness among Florida Gulf Coast University students and faculty about critical sustainability issues in our region. In A Long Way Gone, a chronicle of his experience as a child soldier in Sierra Leone, Beah uses words to create a powerful message of hope in extreme adversity. Incoming FGCU freshmen read A Long Way Gone in 2008 as part of the First Year Experience Readership Project. Beah was also the special guest speaker for the 2008 Convocation. This year, the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education has invited him back to FGCU to join a discussion on how young people can communicate and collaborate for a sustainable and peaceful future. The event will include other youth speakers on topics such as digital collaboration toward sustainability, critical engagement with consumer media, and the theme of hope, despair, and the future. Other confirmed panelists include Arabella Daniels of the Student Farmworker Alliance, a representative from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and FGCU graduate focused in youth leadership, Jacob Scott. FGCU President Wilson G. Bradshaw will offer opening remarks. The Dialogue will take place on Wednesday, November 4, 2009, at 7:00pm in the Student Union Ballroom B. The Center invites stakeholders, community members, students, and campus leaders for conversation and snacks outside the Ballroom before the event at 6:15pm. The Terry Tempest Williams Student Dialogue is an event for students, by students. Faculty are encouraged to invite students to attend, as students organize the Dialogue and comprise most of its audience. The series focuses on education for a sustainable future, including our role as stewards of our natural, cultural, and political environments. Intended to spark youth action and inspire the intellectual climate among the FGCU and Southwest Florida communities, the initiative fosters an open space for dialogue and student ownership of that dialogue. The Dialogue is a signature event of the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education. For more information, please contact the Center by email at cese@fgcu.edu or by phone at 239-590-7166.