Sustainability
As part of the aforementioned Javari Education Project, this is an original story that is featured in Lesson 1 of our online curriculum. This short story follows a young girl’s exciting tour of her neighborhood. We hope that this fun and playful book helps kids identify and appreciate all the special things that make their community a home.
Please read the book here.
I’m so happy to introduce you to my second children's book, Hullabaloo, Goodnight Deep Blue! This book, also sponsored by the Dallas Zoo, is entirely dedicated to promoting ocean conservation and raising awareness about the critically-endangered vaquita porpoise. I loved studying videos and pictures of sea animals and had even more fun illustrating them! It was always a pleasure to return to my desk after a long day, grab my digital pencil and iPad, and start drawing and rhyming away.
The book is now available on Barnes & Noble. I hope you enjoy it and become better acquainted with the gentle, majestic vaquita (just like I did).
I am particularly excited to share a special project that I worked on during the summer of 2018! Because of my love for art and animals, I partnered with the Dallas Zoo to create a children’s book entitled Hullabaloo, Good Morning Dallas Zoo. I collaborated with the Dallas Zoo to author, illustrate, and publish this children's book. Through IngramSpark, a self-publishing software service, the book is officially published in both e-book and print versions! I learned so much about self-publishing, and my experience volunteering at the Dallas Zoo has especially made this experience all the more meaningful.
The book is now available on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites. All proceeds go to the Dallas Zoo and toward conservation programs! The link below will direct you to the websites where the book can be purchased and delivered. I hope you enjoy it!
The issue of environmental conservation is deeply intricate and interdisciplinary, and it demands an integrated approach informed by artistic, ethnic, and socio-economic insights to formulate productive and enduring solutions. I am exploring how a compelling, cross-disciplinary combination of green architecture, education, and conservation can combat problems of environmental degradation, food insecurity, and urban decay within an area. This triad of influences guides my design of Project Synergy, a proposed environmental education, cultural, and community center that would be built on an urban site in the state of Wyoming.
Click here to read the paper.
How do we reconcile the tremendous strides the human race has taken to build and better the world in the last millennium with the intense and ineffaceable consequences of its relentless drive for dominance over the natural world? We are living in a time marked by industry, innovation, and interconnectedness, where energy is incessantly harvested and exhausted on a titanic scale, cutting-edge technology is leveraged to overcome the world’s greatest challenges, and information flits across digital screens at meteoric velocity. We are also living in a time marred by ecological collapse, wildlife endangerment, extinction, and energy crises. Reconciling progress and sustainability is a simply stated problem that does not lend itself to simple solutions.
Click here to read the paper.
As a part of the year-long Conservation Research Project, I have been working with the IIC and Céline Cousteau, filmmaker and environmentalist, to create a curriculum for 9-12 year old kids that teaches them about environmental interconnectedness and sustainability from the perspective of the indigenous Marubo tribe.
Indigenous Peoples only make up 4% of the global population, yet they nurture 80% of the world’s biodiversity on their land. One of the most biodiverse regions in the world is the Brazilian Amazon, which is home to the many different indigenous groups and hosts the highest concentration of uncontacted communities in the world. Our project will focus on the Marubo Tribe that resides in the Javari Territory of the rainforest. The struggles and survival of the Marubo tribe is documented in Cousteau’s documentary Tribes on the Edge (2021).
Using the film as inspiration, we are drafting 8-9 lessons that investigate and celebrate the key connections that bind us to the Amazon rainforest community: Air & Water, Biodiversity, Health & Wellbeing, Food, and Natural Resources. Because of the massive learning potential of young students, we believe that teaching them about our interconnectedness, both locally and globally, is a promising way to ensure that newer generations can take charge and take care of their future.
