By Gabby Pogantsch – Outreach Intern

Hello everyone! It’s Gabby here with a recap of March. What a crazy month is has been as we’re already enjoying our wonderful Earth Month celebrations. In March, we focused our content on Women in Sustainability Month and tied black women/creators in sustainability into this theme as we just celebrated Black History Month in February. Ashley and I released two new podcast episodes this month titled ‘danner, doc martens & more’ and ‘the (wo)man, the myth, the legend.’ These two episodes were dedicated to answering questions about sustainability and environmentalism overall and episode 5, ‘the (wo)man, the myth, the legend,’ featured Maryam Enterline, who is a woman of color that incorporates many amazing sustainable practices in her lifestyle. She is a super interesting lady who founded and runs her own business, Enterline Designs. Maryam and her husband, who also happens to be our boss, have also visited all of the state parks in Wisconsin, so tune in to that episode to learn more about her and her adventures! All of our podcast episodes are located on anchor.fm/theconsciouslypowerful. 

We just finished up our first Earth Month events, including a new one called Wellness in the Nature Preserve. This event featured many local wellness groups, such as Active Minds, Brienne Brown Yoga, Community Health in Practice (CHIP), University Health and Counseling Services, Whitewater Grocery Co., and Working for Whitewater’s Wellness (W3) tabling with some great information and resources. We held three different sessions on introductory yoga, meditation, and a quick prairie tour to practice mindfulness in nature. You can find our whole list of Earth Month events at our website. Events go until Friday, April 30th and include many events hosted by Whitewater Student Government during their Sustainability Week. 

With coming up on my graduation in May, I’ve been focusing a lot on finding jobs in the sustainability and environmental field and this last year and a half at the office has been my saving grace when it comes to defining my ‘personal mission’ while applying for new positions. The Sustainability Office has been an internship where I’m allowed the opportunity to show what I’m capable of doing all while working on amazing projects like the podcast and a full Earth Month event calendar. 

Reflecting back on my time here, it has urged me to explore many different work environments from testing water in a stream, growing a massive garden, tabling at campus events and planning events behind a computer screen. Writing a ‘recap’ can be difficult when there’s so many amazing things to point out that we do every day in the office. 

I hope the month of March has brought you all many great things and I can’t wait to see where the rest of this semester takes us! 🙂