Interview: Let's Procrastinate
Introduce yourselves! Who are the people behind Let’s Procrastinate?
We are Chiara Alcantara and Reign Lapuz from Let’s Procrastinate! We’re grade 11 students from Toronto, Canada and we founded this podcast together. It is usually just us behind the podcast as well as our wonderful guests who come on our podcast, however, recently we welcomed Bryannah Lumanog to our team as a social media coordinator.
Why did you start your podcast? What is your goal?
We started our podcast earlier this year and we did not expect to grow this big! Our intention with our podcast is to always educate ourselves and teach others on global issues whilst raising money towards something we’re passionate about, which is mental health. So to our supporters so far, thank you so much for helping us! Every stream and donation means more than you think.
How is what you are doing helping/affecting the world?
We both value the importance of raising awareness surrounding global issues so that we can start making small differences in the world. That being said, we strive to cover several global issues with our podcast by providing a space where people can share their perspectives in the world so that we can all learn from each other. Other than that, we donate the proceeds from our podcast to Stella’s Place, a local youth mental health charity in our area and occasionally hold fundraisers to help others.
Why do you feel it is so important for students to be informed on world issues?
We believe the first step to progression is education. Society is constantly changing and it is important to educate ourselves on the issues surrounding our world around us to progress in a positive way. That is why with our podcast we gain perspectives from all individuals to make sure our education is well rounded and we are able to discover small ways we can influence the world in a positive light. For example, in our episode covering the Uighur abuse in China, we learned that some of the stores people commonly buy from unethically source their cotton from factories that imprison the Uighurs. Since then we stopped buying from those companies and hope to encourage other people from buying from those stores. This turns into a domino effect just from raising awareness which is why we think it’s so important to help our generation continue to positively progress in society.
What are some ways students can become more involved in world issues? Does Let’s Procrastinate have any involvement opportunities?
Some ways we can be more involved in world issues are:
Making friends from different cultures and teaching yourself the importance of looking through multiple perspectives. With a wider scope, you can be a better ally.
I think we see this one a lot, but it really helps to involve yourself in charities. Whether it’s donating, volunteering or fundraising for a good cause, it makes a ripple effect in someone’s day-to-day life.
Research. Whether it’s a reliable instagram infographic or a news article, you should read it and better understand the situation. It definitely helps to always be aware of current issues and events.
Let’s Procrastinate participates in all these activities stated above. We are always open to making friends, and collaborating with people and organizations to talk about issues they’re passionate about, whether it’s through an infographic or a podcast episode, let us know if you want to collaborate!
Where do you see Let’s Procrastinate in 5 years?
We hope to continue to spread awareness about global issues and overall keep doing what we are doing to try and make a small difference in the world. Hopefully, we can move onto bigger things, bigger fundraisers, things like that but essentially we hope to follow our original goal which is to just help other people educate themselves about global issues as well as help others in our community in any way we can.