After a very enjoyable 3 months working as an intern with Sustainability Action it is now time for me relinquish my official role as Student Engagement Assistant and become the volunteer student representative on the team. The past 12 weeks have gone incredibly fast, and have seen many exciting plans and projects being developed – so as a part review/part update, I thought I’d write just a little bit about what we’ve been up to this summer.
Beckie, VP Welfare, makes a pledge at our Sustainability Training workshop
I spent my first few weeks getting acquainted with the programme and learning the ins and outs of the University. We developed a few key focuses for what I would be working on over the course of my internship; one of which has been to think about ways we can engage students through the societies. This summer has seen us develop some valuable partnerships with projects such as Enactus Soton Swap. In addition, we’ve being running some awareness games with the pre-sessional students, and hopefully Freshers will be able to join in too when they arrive.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of my internship was training the Sabbatical Officers in Sustainability awareness – it was really great to explore with them the importance of sustainability at University and within the Students Union, and it was very exciting to hear their plans to incorporate elements of sustainability into events for the upcoming year.
We’ve been working very closely with Beckie Thomas, SUSU VP Welfare who looks after the Sustainability Zone of SUSU and have been planning a few initiatives in partnership with her and the Ethical and Environmental committee ready for the new term. The first event of the year is “Make a Difference Day” during freshers week and we’ve been planning lots of exciting activities for students to learn about sustainability and find out how they can join in. The event is on Thursday 26th September and you’ll be able to find us making pledges alongside E&E on concourse. We hope to see you come along and pledge with us to make Southampton more sustainable!
In addition to all that, I’ve been promoting sustainability at the university open days during the summer and have been talking to prospective students about everything we do here in Southampton. We have also spent a lot of time creating our new and exciting website, which you can visit here: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/sustainabilityaction The website will be continuously updated with news and events so keep an eye out for what you can get involved in; and of course, we’ll be regularly blogging on this site about what Sustainability Action have been up to.
I’m really looking forward to working with Sustainability Action this year, and putting a lot of our research and plans from the summer into action! Until then, we’ll be enjoying the last few quiet days at university, before the freshers arrive and we get started on what hopes to be a very exciting year ahead.