An Introduction

Welcome all newcomers!

My name is Celine, and I'm glad you found yourself here! I thought that for a site about stories, it would make sense to share mine:

I'm passionate about environmental activism.

After attending conferences and being a student leader for the Global Issues Network (GIN) for the past four years, I've been so inspired by the sheer level of passion and grit that students, like myself, are capable of when it comes to combatting real, important, and incredibly relevant issues in our world.

Last year, I became the President of my school's Global Issues Network Club, and I knew I wanted to do something that would make a real difference on a local scale.

With this direction, I moved my club towards focusing on a single initiative to combat food waste: composting.

All year, we worked tirelessly to design and implement a composting system at our school from scratch. We built the bins ourselves, held staff trainings, and created maintenance schedules, which we carried out ourselves. (More about that to come!)

At the end of the year, I saw that with focus and direction, we were able to create tangible, meaningful change right here at our school. And there was still so much to do.

Credit: Gaia Nature Conservation

With the vision of creating a more sustainable school environment and a more globally conscious community, I formed a new environmental club -- EcoSSIStem.

The thing is, from my experience in GIN, I knew that there were plenty of other clubs and students in Ho Chi Minh City alone doing great work for the environment. With all of our hard hours spent developing resources and plans, I thought, "Why the need to reinvent the wheel, every single time?"

I saw the need for a public space for us all to share, reflect, and support one another through such important work. Because it really is hard.

Enter, Grassroots.

Just like we had adapted our system from compost programs in other schools, I thought it only fitting to carry on the spirit of sharing by publishing our plans as free resources on this website (coming soon!).

I hope you can help this network grow, so that students all over the country (and beyond!) can be inspired!

If you'd like to add you/your group to the network, just send me an email introducing yourself and your work at vietnamgrassroots@gmail.com.

Looking forward to it!

Celine Pham

EcoSSIStem President

#grassroots #ssiscompost #ssis #ecossistem #welcome