Introducing the work of NUS UK - greening future leaders through higher education
Jamie Agombar
Hi all
I’m new to this list, but Simon suggested I send a quick post to let you know what we are up to here in the UK
NUS is a confederation of 600 students’ unions, collectively representing seven million students in colleges and universities in the UK. We are student-led and a not for profit, employing 230 staff, of which 23 (10%) work full time on sustainability. www.nus.org.uk
We run a number of successful programmes that seek to engage students and staff in sustainability:
· Student Switch Off is our fun energy competition for students living in dormitories, run through social media, it consistently delivers over 6% reductions in electricity use, this year it in 130,000 student rooms! See short film here.
· Green Impact is our staff engagement tool, now at 60 universities, last year delivering 52,000 green actions, 26,000 of which were as a direct result if the scheme. last year we trained up 1,200 students as our mentors and auditors, helping with the green skills agenda. See short films here and here
· Student Eats (Edible and Tasty Spaces) is our initiative that gets students growing their own food through campus allotments, but also covertly engaging academics in sustainability
· Snap it Off! allows students to upload photos of energy being wanted that they can’t control. We then contact the energy managers and try and fix it for them
The above projects are delivered into more than 80 universities and colleges in the UK, funded by each institution, and increasingly off-campus into local communities too. We have just gone international through some EU funding, so will be working with universities in Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania and Sweden to develop and roll-out the Student Switch Off model
Our vision is: i) students’ unions as a network of 600 green hubs, greening themselves, their institutions, and their local communities; ii) students leaving
tertiary education as part of the solution to environmental challenges, rather than part of the problem. We have a short
animation that captures our vision
We recently received Government backing for our vision, and £5m of state funding to scale up our work. We have spent it (!) through the Students’ Green Fund, which is finding 25 transformational student-led sustainability projects in England. See short film on how we are changing students’ lives here
As well as all our people work, we do a lot of work greening the student supply chain, and we have recently bought Epona, a small ethical clothing company so we can create the world’s first Fairtrade and living Wage range of clothing, watch his space
Finally, we try to practice what we preach, so have a very green HQ, we are particularly proud of the cradle to cradle / pay per lux lighting solution that we developed with Philips, whereby they have a financial incentive to help us use less electricity
Hope all this is of interest. We are always keen to explore how we might partner with others to share our ideas and models, please do contact me if you have ideas. The new EU Horizon 2020 funding is of interest to us, especially EE9 and EE10
Thanks, Jamie
Jamie Agombar
Ethical & Environmental Manager
jamie....@nus.org.uk
07738 883451
NUS Services, Snape Road, Macclesfield, SK10 2NZ
Simon Valdenaire
Jade Buddenberg
Dear Jamie,
just wanted to express my respect for your work. In my student days I remember how hard we fought to Green the Campus - I was the president of People and Planet Soc LSE – amazing to see how far this has come in a collective effort. Maybe you would be willing to tell us your story for a collection of practical examples for Collective Leadership that we are looking to publish?
Best wishes,
Jade
| Jade Buddenberg | Project Manager Collective Leadership Institute e.V. Building Competence for Sustainability Eisenhartstrasse 2, 14469 Potsdam, Germany Tel: +49 (0) 331 58 16 59 6-0 | Fax: +49 +49 (0) 331 58 16 59 6-22 | ||||
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| E-Mail: jade.bu...@collectiveleadership.com Website: www.collectiveleadership.com http://www.stakeholderdialogues.net |
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