“I rapidly realized that I was still in a community where students cared passionately about uncovering truths and addressing injustices. Perhaps they were young and super-polite, but they were also very bright and very knowledgeable, ready not only to rule the world but to change it.”
Service Learning as a Lifelong Passion My formative teaching years were spent at Trent
Enter Joanna Dafoe into the Google search engine, and
University, and there I was surrounded by students who
you will glimpse her engagement on environmental
wanted to change the world: Trent’s strong
issues—appearances on As It Happens, YouTube video
Environmental Sciences, Native Studies and
interviews, a University of Toronto Alumni Award for her
Comparative Development Studies programs attracted
environmental leadership, her own blog and Twitter
opinionated intellectuals and activists from around the
postings (see, for example, http://live.tcktcktck.
globe. On my first day of work at The Grove, I remember
org/2010/12/joanna-dafoe-much-at-stake-in-cancun/).
surveying the clean, well-scrubbed and happy LCS
Joanna lives a career as an environmental mobilizer that
student body in Chapel and reflecting—mistakenly, as it
quite literally would have been impossible to imagine
turns out—that my days in classrooms with student
ten years ago. Working for the “Adopt a Negotiator”
activists were probably over.
program, she tracks Canada’s activity in UN climate change negotiations, using blog and Twitter postings to
That first day was also September 11, 2001. As the weeks
make the information readily accessible to average
and months of media exposure to homeland security
Canadians, and then using the feedback on her postings
and weapons of mass destruction unfolded, I rapidly
to let negotiators know Canadian concerns.
realized that I was still in a community where students cared passionately about uncovering truths and
But this isn’t Joanna’s only job (and it is quite clear,
addressing injustices. Perhaps they were young and
drawing from the experiences of these grads, that
super-polite, but they were also very bright and very knowledgeable, ready not only to rule the world but to change it. There are hundreds of LCS grads making a difference, as the accomplished young alumni profiled below would humbly acknowledge. But a snapshot of the careers of just three—Lindsey Hepburn-Aley ’02, Nik MacLean ’03 and Joanna Dafoe ’04—is enough to inspire us all.
6 | Grove News Fall/Winter 2011
working as a world-changer in the 21st century means creating a pastiche of employment activities, rather than finding a single “job”). Joanna is also a freelance researcher, currently working out of Stockholm, investigating institutional venues for negotiating climate change and strategies for trust-building for the United Nations. She honed her research skills by working parttime for her professors at the University of Toronto while finishing a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies; she