Post by: Margherita Tommasini
A 2nd year student at College of the Atlantic
I really feel uncomfortable speaking
in public, I feel that no matter as much as I prepare in my head, I am not
going to able to express myself, and that whatever I am going to say, it will
not be good enough.
For our first interaction with
the Energy Academy, during our first full day here in Samsø, we were asked to
introduce ourselves and talk about our expectations for this trip. For the very
first time, I did not feel that way. As Malene asked us, whenever we felt
ready, to pick the “speaking stick”, I reflected for a few minutes, and then I
felt ready to share.
It might have been Malene’s
encouraging tone, or the positive energy irradiated by the beautiful nature
that characterizes this island, or the respect and support that I could feel
from my fellow students and the professors, but I felt something new, a
reassuring feeling of acceptance and interest for me and what I had to say.
One of the most amazing things
about the Academy, on top of the solar rooftop, the ridiculously low energy
consumption, the low impact architecture, is the fact that it is an open space.
It is a house,
as Søren and Malene call it, that
welcomes any guest that knocks at its door: be it a group of Danish CEOs, a
Swedish middle-school class that won a prestigious contest, the Israeli
ambassador, or a group of wild and loud college students from America…
It is hard to talk about what I
have learnt over this past week, because there have been so many “revealing”
moments, so much inspiration, many sparking conversation, and a lot of
self-discovery and individual growth.
My expectation for this week, the
one I intrepidly shared on that first morning, was to learn how to make the
impossible possible. I have
lived in Italy, Bosnia Herzegovina and now the United States, and from all
these places, the transition achieved by Samsø seem a far utopia. Bad
institutions, a post-conflict society, and the empire of capitalism seem
incapable of letting down the corporate system of unsustainability. I was
expecting to get off the ferry from Kalundborg and step into a magic land of
semi-gods, heroes that found the proper
way to live in harmony with nature.
I was kind of wrong. Yes, people
from Samsø are different in a way, but they are just like anybody. They work,
own a house, drive their cars (and they even use gas), some have solar panels
on their roofs or a wind turbine in their backyard, but some do not. What I was
even more wrong about is the fact that what has happened in Samsø is something that
I had labelled “impossible”: It was not an easy process, it was one that took
more than ten years, a committed core group—and then the energy academy—and the
involvement and participation of the community, but it was within reach. What
it is special about it, is that it allowed people to take action on things they
cared about, to translate their hobbies into practices of sustainability.
And that is what I am taking with
me, as cliché as it sounds: this idea that if people have the space and
infrastructure to do the things they like, they will do them well and it will
be easier to care for each other and for what we share in common.
This week was definitely an
experience that will be very dear to me. Looking to the hills of Samsø and the
sea that surrounds the island from the top of the wind turbine, cycling during
the late sunset (almost at 11 PM) with the wind in favour, swooshing my hair
all over my face, talking to the people of Samsø, getting to know my
fellow-students—my friends—, I got to learn about community engagement and I got to know myself better. I understood
that nothing is impossible, and I have learnt that when people come together,
they are capable of transforming magical things
into reality.
