February Featured People: Mihela Hladin
Interview &Translation / Steffi Chen
1. Welcome to Xindanwei.com, Please introduce yourself. Could you tell us where you’re from and how you got started in the field of sustainability and healthy lifestyle?
I was born in Slovenia, a very small but green country in the middle of Europe. By very small I mean a country with 2 million people. So when I first told this in China, someone in the audience asked me if we all live in the same hotel;) I spent most of my childhood at my grand parents farm, near the city. We grew all our food ourselves, we made all our food ourselves, we treated animals as part of our home. At that time I did not realize that this will be such a great value for me in my future work.
For the first year and a half in China when I was still working for a foreign environmental engineering company, I kept bumping into the same challenge which was that people are not aware enough that you can’t just buy trees. The river will not get clean in a week. I was sure that if the industrial owners I’d been working with had a bigger picture of their environmental impact, they would not continue doing things in the same manner. So, I decided to stay and focus on environmental awareness…to do something that will have an impact on China on a long term with greater quality of life for people. Greennovate was born in late 2007, with consulting arm that helps business to develop sustainable practices and non profit part, that educates communities on environmental and social challenges and solutions.
2. Can you tell us about Grasslands, the new project you are launching in collaboration with Xindanwei? What kind of impact are you trying to create with this project?
I cannot take credit for this idea. What I wanted with out team was, that we would be part of community where creative and bold people are. It is not about how fancy the office buildings are, it is about the content and people they have in. This is a driver for inspiration and action that is much needed in our field. There is so many small, green and health related initiatives going around the town but we all can only have limited outreach if we don’t start joining together and integrating our solutions to make a bigger impact.
3. Both of you have been the driving forces of Grasslands. What prompted the idea of Grasslands and what excited you to make you undertake it?
Amena was really behind the idea of Grasslands. I was in immediately when she introduced it to us and we started to look for a space. It took us a long time and when we saw Shaoxing Lu, it felt like we finally find the right home;) It made perfect sense to partner with you at Xindanwei, I always admired the concept and persistence behind it. We immediately saw we have a lot in common and so we joined our forces.
4. Can you tell us what are the future plans for Grasslands? What kind of environment/community do you expect it to be? How do you want to scale up this project to create a greater impact?
It will take some time to really have the concept in. But nothing happens over night and we want to really make it right. So for this first year we are working on weekly events related to health and sustainability, that will be bringing in different people and partners. We believe this is the best way to show the Grasslands concept and start conversations about future partnerships under this umbrella. We are also actively looking inside our existing partnerships and with companies that are either start ups or entering Chinese market, that would fit with our values and move it. We’d like to create a ‘model’ grasslands hub in Shanghai, fine tune the concept and then scale it up in China and also outside. Like I already said, buildings without ideas, concept and amazing people are just a bunch of walls and decoration.
5. Thanks again for providing Xindanwei.com this opportunity to interview you. Any final thoughts for our readers?
I’d like to finish with a quote that we used to use in our materials when we started Greennovate. I hope it will inspire your readers and give them additional motivation to pursue with their plans and dreams:
‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ – Margaret Mead
