Small steps towards positive change

Every month we find ourselves celebrating or commemorating different essential topics. It’s become a global way to remind everyone of something poignant or encourage them to look at the issues and take steps towards meaningful actions in their lives to promote positive change. If you look at the calendar, it’s full of monthly celebrations and special days for important topics.

These celebrations have also become signposts for companies and organizations to mobilize and spread about the issues. Many businesses commemorate these monthly celebrations with their own events, discounts or office activities. It’s their way of showing that they care about the issues that are important to their people.

The latest celebration was International Women’s Day in March. From an International Women’s Day to a full month celebration, this yearly event puts women under the spotlight and showcases their valuable contributions in every arena – family, work, society. Through the celebration of IWD, we are reminded about the importance of gender equality and encouraged to see how we are pushing for change and promoting equity in the workplace and society.

Also, in March, we celebrated Earth Hour. This celebration reminded everyone to pause and check their personal consumption. For an hour (or more), people turned off lights and all electrical devices in solidarity with decreasing our carbon footprint. This is more and more important every year because while we remain aware of the issues facing the environment, we aren’t doing nearly enough to mitigate the ongoing damage.

In April, we marked World Health Day. This was celebrated last April 7, while some countries marked National Walking Day on April 6. While health has always been vital (after all, the phrase health is wealth didn’t just come from nowhere), it’s always fallen by the wayside in the wake of deadlines and hustle.

That’s no longer the case presently, though. The last two years have reminded us how important our health is and how significant an impact a global health crisis can have on our businesses and lives. Now, we are looking more closely at how we can safeguard our health in the face of potentially more threats in the future.

It’s not ironic that the environmental and health celebrations come one after the other. After all, these two are inextricably linked. Many relate how we treat the environment and pollute the Earth to push back on how more and more health problems are emerging.

Human health is impacted by the state of the world. As we continue to be complacent about climate change and global warming, we create a hotbed of potential new health concerns that can turn into full-blown global problems if we’re not careful.

This year, the World Health Organization attempts to raise global awareness about environmental issues and how these can impact our health and safety. This year’s World Health Day theme is appropriately “Our Planet, Our Health,” as the WHO attempts to highlight the correlation between pollution and the rise of diseases and the negative impact on human health.

This is not a stretch to make, and, surprisingly, we haven’t highlighted these two together more often. After all, is it shocking to note that the lack of clean water, extreme weather phenomena, rising temperatures, and the surge of unhealthy processed food and beverages would result in health problems in the wider population? If we continue to live like this, we can only expect more and more issues to arise in the future.

With this celebration for 2022, the WHO is pushing for more societies to focus on total well-being. And this means protecting the environment too and being more cognizant of our consumption and how we live. Now, alongside eating healthy and living well, we should also actively decrease our consumption and take steps to improve our daily lives.

I know it seems daunting, especially considering that the bulk of consumption comes from corporations and not individuals. Still, small steps – when taken together – can lead to significant results. So let’s be more cognizant of what we do every day. Use eco-bags whenever we can, cut down our plastic consumption, walk whenever possible, and eat healthy as much as we can. These may seem like tiny steps to take, but I think the more we do it, the more we’ll begin to see improvements in our lives and our communities.

And let’s try to remind others to do the same. With enough voices raising the concern together, we can highlight the importance of developing well-being as a collective society and help push governments to make it a priority. In the end, everyone will benefit.

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Just wanted to add that I hope that everyone has a meaningful and safe Holy Week. It’s wonderful to be able to slowly see our families and loved ones again, but let’s also remember that the best way to show our love is to continue to practice safety protocols as much as possible while we reflect and pray this Holy Week. May everyone have a safe one filled with love and peace.