The Action Collective

Change of Focus, by Jolie Ho
A Different Kind of Discomfort: My Best and Last Community Service Trip, by Stephanie Chan
The realisation, by SayLin Ong
Black and White, by Peace Chiu
5 Lessons to change the world, by Huishan Aprilene Goh

5 Lessons to change the world

Huishan is an educator in practice and linguist at heart. She is passionate about environmental issues, and believes strongly that there is there is something intrinsically wrong with excess. Together with two friends, she founded Save That Pen, a socio-environmental initiative that aims to spread the message of sustainability in our everyday lives. She hopes to save enough pens one day to build a livable house of pens that will, obviously, last forever.

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It started with a simple question three years ago in a small university room—why do people throw pens away without thinking, almost heartlessly? It was a discussion that got serious, passionate and eventually turned into action. Save That Pen was founded in the Fall of 2009 and the rest, they say, is timelined on a Facebook wall.

From a simple student-initiated project, we grew to fit a growing local environmentalist agenda. These days, we are working to bring the message of sustainability to schools in Singapore by saving pens.  Through the journey, the lessons I’ve learnt were countless; the last three years of operation have brought insight beyond pens and about life.

These are 5 lessons I think anyone who wants to change the world should know.

1.    Think big, work small

The ideas that change the world are ultimately big ideas. But operationalizing big ideas can eat.you.up. From the start, the project has never been about pens. We founded the organization because we wanted to make a statement about waste and consumption in this society. People don’t know (or care) enough about the subversive sentiments that drove the conceptualization of this project but it started simply—we didn’t like the society we lived in and we sought to change it. Three wide-eyed undergraduate girls thought we would start small and concentrate on the weapon of the educated. We founded Save That Pen with a focus on environmental education—if one can start by contemplating their stance towards a pen, perhaps they can start applying that to other things in their life—paper, water, power, branded bags, the big car.

2.    Expect criticism and welcome it

It’s always been easier to criticize than be encouraging, and you’ll have to understand that haters are going to hate. Forever. It was not easy starting a project such as this in an institution of higher education where criticism is central to its function. People were constantly questioning us “why pens?” and we even got an email once from a professor who noted that while he did not support a “Save That Pen” campaign, he would gladly support a “Save That Penis” campaign. He said, and I quote: “Anyone who persuades himself that saving a ball point pen is a meaningful contribution to preserving the world from global warming is deluding himself. Isn’t this mere posturing?”

Perhaps. But while this comment stems from a decontextualized understanding of the project, criticisms like these allow us chances to refine our rhetoric, reframe our arguments and reaffirm our belief. So welcome criticism, and see it as a chance to better the articulation of your aims.

3. Believe in the good of people

Cynical people exist in this world, and good people do too. Over the years, we’ve had overwhelming support from strangers and friends alike. The support came from unexpected places—the auntie from the heartland who came to deposit a bag of pens she saved from the spring cleaning of 2012, the directors of MNCs and environmental corporations who offered their valuable advice as well as little children who light up at the sight of an old purple pen. When the Straits Times ran a story about us in 2010, a stranger called us up and donated 1,500 brand new Pilot and Uniball pens to us. People can indeed be frustrating, but their goodness is the reason why we’re still here.

4.    Patience is golden

Development is important but the pace of progression matters too. At the core of Save That Pen are the four of us—all of whom have full-time jobs. Save That Pen continues to be our pet “CCA” even though we’ve entered the working-world. The call for development came in the last year as we’ve been working to introduce the project into MOE Schools. We’ve been doing things one step at a time ever since—first we had to get funding for the bins, then we had to dream up on an implementation plan for the schools, let the schools run in, gather feedback… you get the idea. Point is, up till today, we are not ready to take a large number of schools onboard for the project. We are working on that, but well, patience is golden, for now.

5.    Laugh, Love, Live

When Save That Pen first came into fruition, I was going through a rough patch in my life, and expanding extra energy (of which, on hindsight, I seemed to have a lot) to sort pens, or go around the campus to check out the state of our hand-made bins was a therapeutic experience. The two who founded the project with me were very patient. Long talks into the night, midnight escapades to steal sand from West Coast to build our very first pen-bin and the lost alcoholic nights of an undergraduate years coalescing with pen-sorting more than helped me live life in those years. Mostly, we could never stop giggling over the reason why we scraped the original name for the project because it sounded obscene (read: Pens for Pennies). Later, when I left the country for a year to further my studies, the girls helmed the project without me with no complaints.

Make sure that the people who change the world with you are more than working partners. Make sure they are friends.

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'5 Lessons to change the world' concludes "The Action Collective", which featured five guests involved in humanitarian and environmental work. To view the articles under The Action Collective, click here.