Livestream of EYE Forum (July 24)

Food waste is a huge problem in the US: more than 1/3 of food that’s produced ends up being thrown away.  The discarded food that’s dumped into landfills releases methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas.  In fact, organic material decomposition accounts for 1/3 of the world’s methane production.  

Furthermore, producing food requires a significant investment of resources.  In the US, food production uses 15.7% of the total energy budget, 50% of all agricultural land, and covers 80% of all freshwater used.  Wasting food doesn’t only count towards food waste, it’s equivalent to discarding all the land, water, and energy put in to produce it.  

Food for Thought centers around an interactive food waste workshop to address strategies of reducing food waste, and an AI model, SmartFridge, designed to help users keep track of the items they’ve bought.  It aims to spread the message that minimizing food waste to benefit the environment and our community is an incredibly meaningful, but also approachable act.  Sometimes when we think about climate change, we complain about factories and companies not being environmentally friendly, but we can take our own initiative to help as much as we can.  One might think their individual contributions are small, but as a community, we can work together and make a huge impact. 

Business roles in the past have carried steep gender favoritism to this day. The gender inequity in business leadership positions is shocking: less than 35% of senior management positions in businesses are held by women. Moreover, according to Private Banker International, 25% of female entrepreneurs “struggle with confidence in business”. This is also reflected in high schools across Canada, where my school’s business club consisted of 39 boys and only 5 girls.

The nonprofit InspiHER aims to change all that. InspiHER was born with the idea of providing girls in communities and across the world the tools to pursue business roles predominantly held by men. With branches in the United States, Japan, Ottawa, and Vancouver, this organization uplifts girls interested in business through speaker events, fundraisers, and 3 core workshops on entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and “pitching” an idea. Virtual or in-person, their inclusive team ensures that girls can attend regardless of where they live or who they are. With their program’s support, five members have been accepted to internships where they can gain firsthand business experience; over twenty successful fundraisers have been run, each with profits that go back to funding charity events. So far, they’ve extended workshops and funding to 146 girls in our branches, with plans to reach more next year. By giving girls the resources to begin their business journeys, they target equity from the bottom and slowly build upwards.