{"id":449,"date":"2019-03-09T13:55:58","date_gmt":"2019-03-09T18:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/?p=449"},"modified":"2019-03-09T13:59:06","modified_gmt":"2019-03-09T18:59:06","slug":"desire-to-make-a-positive-social-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/2019\/03\/09\/desire-to-make-a-positive-social-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Desire to make a positive social impact"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Lindsay<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since around sixth grade I have had a desire to make an impact, I wanted to change the world, to leave a mark and do good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To me social impact is an individual\u2019s actions that can have an impact on the well-being of a community or an ecosystem. \u00a0Since around sixth grade I have had a desire to make an impact, I wanted to change the world, to leave a mark and do good. I had a teacher that inspired me to want to save the manatees. From there on I had a passion for volunteer work. Then in college I thought I was going to be a marine biologist and I changed from wanting to save the manatees to saving the sea turtles. I didn\u2019t end up as a marine biologist and while I did study sea turtles for a semester I haven\u2019t saved them\u2026yet. I think of that desire to make an impact now as I am on the verge of leaving for South Africa. Where for the first time since I was an undergrad I am embarking on a mission for good. With my history of wanting to save animals you may think I am going to South Africa to save the sharks or maybe elephants or lions. But I am going to South Africa to work on a project with microgrids. An energy solution that was mostly foreign to me until I joined this class, and while I am still not an expert, I have learned a lot in the couple of months leading up to the trip.<\/p>\n<p>Access to electricity and modern energy sources is a global problem. Of the world\u2019s 7+ billion people, more than 1.2 billion do not have access to electricity. Nearly twice that number lack access to safe and reliable energy. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, more than 620 million people lack access to electricity, and current population growth rates outpace growth in energy access. Even as I write this if you Google \u201cpower outage, Johannesburg\u201d there is news of a widespread power outage from a day ago. Many share a vision that future communities (residential and commercial developments, university and industrial campuses, military installations, and so on) will be self-sufficient with respect to energy production and will adopt microgrids. A typical microgrid portfolio includes solar and wind resources, gas-fired generation, demand-response capabilities, electrical and thermal storage, combined heat and power and connectivity to the grid. Advanced technologies such as fuel cells may also be included.<\/p>\n<p>Make no mistake I also look forward to going on a safari, something I have wanted to do since I wanted to save the manatees. But I also hope to be able to make a small difference in the brief time we are there. I look forward to working on our consulting project and working with the client company to answer questions and begin to hopefully provide some solutions and find a way to make microgrids more accessible and financially feasible for companies in Johannesburg and beyond to other parts of Africa. I can\u2019t wait to get there and continue the social impact mission I have had since I was younger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Lindsay Since around sixth grade I have had a desire to make an impact, I wanted to change the world, to leave a mark and do good. To me social impact is an individual\u2019s actions that can have an impact on the well-being of a community or an ecosystem. \u00a0Since around sixth grade I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12084,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12084"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":450,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions\/450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/socialimpactblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}