AWC Going Dutch March 2019

FAWCO Corner
by Julie Mowat, AWC The Hague FAWCO Representative
Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas, a United Nations NGO with
consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council
www.fawco.org.
2018: The Year Planet Earth
Cried for Help Loud Enough
for Humans to Hear
by Anne van Oorschot & Rena Levin (AWC Oslo), member of FAWCO’s Environment
Team
The upcoming biennial conference
will be held this month in Edinburgh,
Scotland. Several AWC Members are
attending, and we look forward to sharing
what we have learned when we return. A
beautiful quilt has been made by members
of clubs all over the world, including several
panels from our own Members. It looks gorgeous!
If you would like to try to win this in
the raffle held at the conference (you do not
need to attend, I will bring it back for you),
please contact me at fawco@awcthehague.
org to buy your tickets. Quilt raffle tickets
are one for €5 or five for €20.
Repatriating to the U.S.? FAUSA is an
alumni organization for FAWCO and has
chapters all over the U.S. It’s a great way
to keep in contact with people who have
had similar experiences. Membership is
$25 a year. Please contact me or visit www.
FAUSA.org for more information.
FAWCO has a youth cultural volunteers
program that our youth could participate
in. The purpose of the program is to help
youth discover volunteering, develop their
cultural understanding and awareness of
global issues, and create a sense of global
citizenship. If you have a child aged 15 –
18, they could be a part of this great experience.
Last June, AWC Berlin hosted 12
youth. This year’s group served refugees,
homeless, disabled, and severely ill people
living in Berlin through their volunteer
work at multiple organizations. They also
took tours, a youth in democracy workshop,
a cooking evening with Syrian refugees, and
a session with a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor.
Please contact fawcoyouth@fawco.
org if you are interested or have any questions.
FAWCO offers clubs workshops and webinars
on various topics including citizenship,
voting, taxes and banking concerns. Go to
www.fawco.org/club-workshops for more
information.
Credit: Arbor Day Foundation
As co-Chair of FAWCO’s Environment
Team, I coordinate a group of 11
women, all members of FAWCO clubs
around the world very much like our AWC
of The Hague. Each month, we publish an
article about a current environmental topic to
try to increase awareness among FAWCO’s
members. The following article was contributed
by the very knowledgeable Rena, from
the AWC in Oslo.
2018 may be remembered as the year planet
Earth cried for help loud enough for humans
to begin to hear. Devastating forest fires
in California, a deadly heatwave in Japan,
drought in central and northern Europe,
severe flooding in Kerala, India—environmental
disasters were often on the news.
Though no single extreme weather event
can be attributed to climate change, the increasing
number and severity of them point
to the reality of what scientists have been
trying to tell us for years: we must reduce
greenhouse gas emissions drastically and
quickly.
Though climate change is getting harder to
ignore, understanding how you can make a
difference can be challenging. If greenhouse
gas emissions were tangible, than reducing
them would be as easy to see as plastic collected
at a beach clean-up or trash and recycling
bins filling up more slowly than they
used to.
Carbon Footprint
Everyone has a carbon footprint. Your footprint
size is measured in tons of CO2 emitted
to fuel things you do over the course of
a year. In order to shrink your footprint, you
first have to know how big it is. Thankfully,
carbon footprint calculators are easy to find
online. The specific questions vary a bit, but
all of them focus on household energy consumption
(size of residence, power source,
insulation, etc.), transportation (local and
long-distance), and lifestyle (consumer habits,
diet, etc.). To get a sense of your footprint
try:
• Global Footprint Network (www.
footprintcalculator.org)
• UN carbon footprint calculator (www.
offset.climateneutralnow.org/
footprintcalc)
• Myclimate (www.co2.myclimate.org/
en/footprint_calculators/new)
The results you will get are estimates based
on your best guess of what you do. They may
vary a bit and they will be imperfect.
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30 GOING DUTCH
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