Nidhi Kapur: An Inspiring Speaker

Nidhi KapurCaptivating the audience with the story of her adventurous journey of how she became a humanitarian, we were privileged to listen to the last keynote speaker, Nidhi Kapur, as the Round Square Conference came to a close.

Nidhi Kapur graduated from UWCSEA in 2001, and went on to study International Relations at the University of Toronto and London School of Economics. She is currently living in eastern Congo, and spoke to us about some pressing social issues. She has worked for a number of international organizations, including the Red Cross, Save the Children, and International Alert.

She started by pointing out an action that most of us in the room were doing at that moment that contradicted our pursuit of a more sustainable society: The perpetual use of our mobiles and computers. With Kapur’s explanation, we began to think differently about our use of these devices.

Small components in our electronic devices are mainly made from minerals mined from eastern Congo; however, the country is currently fighting for the authority over their natural resources.

Our continuous investment in these electronics is aggravating the situation by adding value to the profit of the mineral trade. What I mean is that as more people are buying these goods containing the minerals, we are financially supporting the armed groups that currently have dominance over the country and are terrorizing its citizens.

To me, Nidhi Kapur’s speech was the most influential because it informed me about the problems we were actually creating (or worsening) due to our carelessness. This is not at all compatible with our desire to help create a sustainable world.

After the speech, each school was given time to analyze some social problems and bring forward solutions by using the the techniques and skills we’ve acquired during the past week. The skills we learned revolved around sustainability, and we learned various methods to break down problems into subtopics. There was the iceberg graph, where the iceberg stood for the whole problem and the tip of it exemplified only the visible part of the situation. We also followed a set of questions that helped lead us toward solutions.

Ultimately, I believe the goal of the Round Square Conference trip was for young thinkers to converge, become more informed, and plan for our tomorrow. It showed us that every one of us is capable of making changes to protect our future.

– Yaeji Kang ’16

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