Author:
Petra Demartis
Short summary:
Meet Petra: a bubbly individual passionate about social change, healthy plant based living and yoga and sports junkie.
- Do you have a Nickname?
Not an established one, but some include Pe, Pipe, Petruzza and Petrita. Most people just modify my name according to what they feel.
- Explain to a stranger what do you do for Green Steps?
I came to Green Steps through Workaway, a platform for people to travel, work and volunteer. During my time here I took care of the social media networks and promotion which involves shooting content, creating captions and templates and building an audience. I wrote some content on the newsletter linking important research concepts to activites carried out via Greensteps.
I also helped out in their practical activities such as the Groovy Gardens in school, Plastic Pirates and Big Friendly Giants walks and was here for a Transition Conference Green Steps helped organize.
- What is your daily routine? What is something you like doing and your coworkers maybe don’t know about you?
My daily routine starts with waking up early, meditating and some good food. I like to structure my days, but with time I am also learning to leave some wiggle room and learn to do nothing! I focus a good part of my energy in prioritizing well-being and conscious choices and have found Austria quite suitable for that. Here I found a peaceful and calm place where I can go for walks along the river, go running, go bouldering, but also head to Vienna for a day trip filled with art history and vegan traditional food or rock climbing and hiking for weekend adventures. On the side, I also try to fit in some learning and studying to feed my curiosity. I enjoy sports, mindful practices and chats after dinner with my roommates.
A side my coworkers have perhaps not seen is my creative spirit. I enjoy writing and making crafts and ornamental dreamcatchers have been my go to recently :), I find it a great combination of creativity and self-soothing.
- Use less than 250 words to tell a story about yourself: starting from “where are you from” to the choice of joining Green Steps.
When people ask me where I am from I tend to have a hard time answering. I was born in Italy close to the Alps and then spent part of my childhood in South Africa and I feel part of both cultures. When I returned to Italy, I went to a school that had a strong international imprint and was quite demanding in terms of study and activities. I always found time for sports and nature and I find that my upbringing mostly outdoors had a strong impact on that. In South Africa I was doing a lot of sports and spent most of my time outside, I know very little about kids cartoons and movies because I was rarely watching TV! Growing up, I find that this openness brought me to study abroad, be in contact with new cultures and maybe also studying International Relations. During my studies I also noticed that I wanted to dedicate more of my efforts to nature and the environmental field and thus decided to take a gap year to explore the work before starting my masters. Green Steps seemed like the perfect combination of social and environmental work and that is how I ended up here!
- Mention a book you read as a teenager that still tells something about you, and that you would still suggest reading.
In middle school I remember enjoying the Hunger Games and the Maze Runner. Both series of books are embedded in dystopian societies and the plot develops as adventurous and focuses on less privileged groups that fight against a larger system.
Today, I see that my strong sense of social justice can also be traced back to these reads. The books reflect what today I see in people engaged in activism, volunteering for the common good and collectively trying to do something meaningful against a system that goes against them. I like to see myself in this and as part of such movement which requires indeed strength and efforts, but most importantly compassion and love for a better planet and future.
- How do you expect you and Green Steps to have an impact in the next years? Close with a wish for the organization.
In the next years I believe I will be studying and continuing to volunteer for environmental and social projects. I hope I will continue to feel part of this global community that works for the common good and for a more connected world and where I also found Green Steps. I believe and hope that the organization will continue bringing the outdoors closer to schools and children and will contribute in shifting our worldview from state centered to a map of ecoregions. Working in this field is sometimes hard because the work is not understood and valued by many, so my wish for Green Steps is to always be more and more welcomed and part of everyone’s reality and mentality.
