Positive and positive actions

2024/01/03 STEAM-Hezkuntza (Elhuyar Zientzia)

• Komikiak
• STEAM-hezkuntza

In critical situations, people adopt one of these three attitudes: passive, reactive or proactive. Although passivity and reactive attitude seem to be opposed, in the end they are very similar, as neither one nor the other is engaged. They take a quieter or bustling look, but they both have passive behavior, without commitment to change.

However, those who have a positive attitude propose solutions to problems. Where others see problems and difficulties, they see motivating situations. And they have an initiative to start the proposed changes.

For young people to take a proactive and entrepreneurial attitude to the climate emergency, it may be useful to remember the achievements of the successful activist movements in history.

The biggest social changes come from social movements. Therefore, this is the time to remember and celebrate the demands and achievements of the different groups throughout history.

Some of the most influential are:

• The movement of women suffragettes started in the 1840s, after many years and throughout the world, gave women the right to vote in elections.
• Martin Luther King, Rigoberta Menchú and Angela Davis are some of the references for the rights of racist people.
• The struggles to make visible the needs of people with functional diversity have managed to reduce architectural barriers in our peoples and turn them into a place of residence for all.
• Father Mari’s work rescuing migrants from water helps visualize the drama of migrants from Africa.
• The initiative of the years of the LGTBIQ+ movement is getting different sexual identities and orientations to take their place in society.
• The feminist movement is proposing radical alternatives for the social transformation of the heteropatriarchal society.
• The Basque Country Chamber of Agriculture supports small farmers and farmers in the Northern Basque Country to develop their own models.
• The energy communities and alternative food networks that are being created in Euskal Herria are experimenting and enhancing other consumption models that can be useful to all.
• Social movements for Euskera and other minority languages are working to protect endangered languages in the world.

We have much to thank the social movements of the past and the present. Without its initiative, the world would now be much more unfair.

Reflect with young people about what social movements they like, what motivates them, what changes they want to see. Celebrate the achievements of the previous ones and make room for the new challenges!

To delve into the contents click here.

This project, promoted by Elhuyar, is supported by the Department of Economic Promotion and Strategic Projects of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa.