Erica Johnson

Bio:

My name is Erica Johnson, and I am a student at Indiana University majoring in Biology. I was born and raised in Princeton, IN. Growing up, I had always heard of the White River since it was near my hometown, but I had never visited it before. It wasn’t until I did research for this project that I discovered all its issues and how badly communities were being affected by it.

Summary:

For this project, we decided as a group to base it on research found about the bodies of water that surrounded our communities. We not only did research about the history of these rivers, but also the negative impact they have on communities today. More specifically, African American communities since unfortunately, they are the ones being affected the most. Along with this information, we also talked about our personal connections to these rivers and how they have affected our communities over the years. Our research consisted of us reading through many internet articles and documents. Then, we used this information to create a website with a story map that talks about the issues. The story map shows the pictures that we took of each of the three rivers we talked about for this project, along with the information we found for them as well. Although anyone can use our website to gain more knowledge about these rivers, the main target audience for our project is the young generation. This is because we want them to be able to access this information now in hopes that they will take action early on and help make a change for the better.

Thoughts on Pumzi:

When I watched Pumzi for the first time, I really didn’t understand the concept too much and I was overall just very confused. All I could think was that I couldn’t imagine having to live in a community like that. But, after watching it the second time, I realized that this film did have a deeper meaning. The main character, Asha, had gained a sense of purpose and she knew it was up to her to fulfill this purpose no matter what it took. After seeing the ending, I was actually inspired by Asha and her bravery. And it also made me realize even more that it is up to us to take steps towards ending the water crises, or we could end up living in a community like Asha.