Interacting with Natalie Mayr reminded me just how much Elon is lacking in diversity. I was fortunate enough to go to a high school back home where there was tons of diversity. A lot of my closest friends were born outside of the United States or were first-generation American-born citizens.
Interacting with my friends back home challenged me, but in the best way possible. It made me think about my life and views critically, and attempt to understand the identity of someone who is very different from me. This kind of challenge enhanced my high school experience. It even enhanced the friendship that I had with these people during my time in high school because we had to work harder to find commonalities. I learned form them and they learned form me; we learned from each other.
The opportunity to interact with Natalie and learn so much about where she is from, what her life is like, etc. made me miss my friends from high school and reminded me just how un-diverse my friends are here at Elon. Diversity is something that is desperately needed in the Elon community. It is unfortunate that I do not know more people who are unlike me, and I hope that in the future the Elon community is filled with all different types of people with different lives, backgrounds and views about the world. That way, students can challenge and learn from each other, therefore becoming more well-rounded people. After all, I learned so much from Natalie during my short time interacting with her throughout the course of this project.
A lot of what Natalie talked about when my group interviewed her for our International Student Documentary had to do specifically with sustainability. Unfortunately, in her home country of Honduras, there is not even a word of sustainability. She said multiple times that the issues of sustainability that are at the forefront of United States policy are not even on the radar in Honduras, but not because people are unaware of global climate change.
It is just a fact that in Honduras, there are much more pressing issues, such as personal safety, etc. Natalie said that these kind of issues are something that citizens in the United States may take for granted. Unfortunately, although sustainability is something that is a huge issue in the world that needs to be addressed, in places like Honduras there is a lot of other issues that need to be addressed first. Eventually, when the time comes, Natalie would like to bring sustainable practices like recycling, etc. to her home country.
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