GP Summary, Last term

Okay, so I haven't posted a reflection on here since about the middle of last term. We've been really busy with assignments, projects, and most of all, exams last week.
At the beginning of this term, we had Earth Day, and we all were put in charge of an NGO, who we emailed, inviting to attend the event and set up a booth for their cause. I chose to invite SOS, the Sumatran Orangutan Society, and they replied and agreed to attend. Earth day was a huge success, and almost all of the NGOs we contacted turned up. On the day, my job was to ensure that everyone had everything they needed, so I got to also go around to all the NGO representatives and thank them for coming. I met some really interesting people, and learnt some pretty cool stuff about what the NGOs were doing too. Like one organisation, the Paradigm Shift group, that basically makes movies to educate the community on issues.
During the middle of the term, we visited one of the NGOs that attended earth day, Karang Lestari, who have a biorock center in Pembuteran, or a coral restoration project. We stayed in Pembuteran for a night, and snorkeled around the reef to see the project and learn about how it all works. There is a battery that feeds an electrical current through an anode and a cathode, the cathode goes into a steel structure, and the anode goes into a sort of steel mesh wire thing. The electrical current travelling through the steel structure causes a chemical reaction which speeds up the growing process of the coral, by up to 5 times. The coral is made of calcium carbonate, and is dying in reefs because of the increased acidity and temperature of the ocean, due to atmospheric pollutants released by humans, and in turn, global warming. This is an issue that we looked into, discovering that it is a problem not just for the local fishermen who depend on the ocean as their livelihood, but also to the fishing communities, and even the world as the fishing store is not only depleted through catching the fish, but also as we damage our seas to a point of no return.
When we came back from Pembuteran, we started looking into GMOs, or Genetically Modified Organisms. We were given an assignment, which was to look into GMOs, and create a podcast, PSA, or short Video about GMOs, and the benefits and/or limitations. I teamed up with Ratri and Sid, and after a brainstorming session turned into one of the most amusing GP classes ever, we decided to put all of that humor to good use, and turn our podcast into a short cartoon movie. Sid quickly stepped into the role of artist in our group, Ratri, having the most creative voices, became one of the main speakers, along with working with me on the script. Our movie basically shows how GMOs can negatively impact a community, and a family, and even a whole lifestyle. More than anything, our video shows how unaware the world actually is of GMOs, and how prevalent they our in our food today.
So far, we have recorded most of our story, which starts off in a supermarket where an elderly citizen is buying some apples. She buys the apples, not knowing that they were bred from genetically modified seeds, and sprayed with pesticides and herbicides as they were growing. She eats the apples at home and gets ill. The scene then moves to a farm, where a farmer is signing a contract saying that he will use these seeds. He does this not knowing how sick these apples could possibly make people when they are fully grown. Soon he realizes, and has to face the decision of breaking the contract, or staying on it even though it is against his ethics, because he has to feed his family. The last scene is of a commercial of two young children advertising the apple in cheery voices, saying that they're freshly grown and healthy. It zooms out from the commercial, to a sick child in a hospital bed who whispers "lies", before his EKG heart moniter stops, showing that his heart has collapsed or something. The doctor walks in, realizes the child is dead, and says that one of the possible causes of his sickness is GMOs.
Sid is working on the drawings, but hasn't got very far, so we might end up using still images behind the voices.