Hello from Esin D'Amery! Events and Campaigns Green Ambassador

Esin

Hello, I’m Esin D’Amery. I am a First year Politics and International Relations Student at The University of Greenwich. 20 by age, but many will agree when I say 40 in attitude. Currently I live in the beautiful town of Greenwich, an area I feel extremely excited about due to the beauty and buzz you get when walking around. I come from London and Hertfordshire originally, but my family currently reside by the seaside in Norfolk.

I first encountered the Sustainability Hub via our current Vice President Campaigns and Representation Sabbatical Officer Kyle Marchalleck. Kyle approached and explained about a new opportunity to combine my interest in sustainability and to get more involved with The Students’ Union.  Admittedly I was a tad weary about getting involved with something which is seen to be a brushed under the carpet idea.  However, after attending one of The Sustainability Hub’s Forums, I met the team and saw how enthusiastic they were. They explained the Hub in a way I found completely intriguing.  I quickly applied and got through to the interview. After passing the interview I was offered the job and here I am!

My first opportunity to get hands on came in the shape of the Fairtrade Fortnight and the chance to host a Cooperative Fairtrade Wine and Cheese night. The Cooperative offer many opportunities to work in conjunction with Universities, schools and businesses to share their knowledge and contacts in order to hold events with a great message. The Sustainability Hub applied to hold the event along with many other institutions, and we were successful in our application – we felt it would be a great opportunity to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight in this manner which we know to be successful. We hope attendees were able to see why it is important to take Fairtrade into consideration with daily life. It is a sad fact that our lack of knowledge and understanding of such controversial and important social issues, cause such drastic drawbacks for the producers we depend on for our daily products. I hoped that by having an actual Fairtrade Producer present for the event, we are able to give attendees a rare face to face opportunity to see the drastic positive change Fairtrade makes to people’s lives.

I worked with the Co-operative to organise the event – it took around 5 weeks to organise it fully. Being a student, I worked around my timetable comfortably and devoted enough time to organise the event without forgetting about my actual degree. The event itself ran perfectly! My amazing team were there helping me out as much as possible and it was fantastic to have them by my side. The Cooperative attended, and along with Daniela Cedron, the Fairtrade wine producer from Argentina. During the event, every last drop of wine was consumed, and every bit of cheese was demolished. All attendees were pleased and I was extremely happy to see such a fantastic turnout! It was great to see something you had initially thought about, actually happen…and successfully! It gave me a great sense of pride in my team and my ability to do my job well!

Hello from Gabriel Aning! Green Impact Green Ambassador

Gabriel

Hey guys! I guess you can never be too late to blog :D! I’m Gabriel, one of the three Green Impact Green Ambassadors. I am a final year Civil Engineering student. Often when I tell people what I study, some of the responses are “WOW!” or “erm, what’s that?”. So I think it’s only fair that I give a brief explanation. According to the Institution of Civil Engineer’s website (ICE) “Civil engineering is all about people. It’s the work that civil engineers do to develop and improve the services and facilities we, the public, all use.”

Civil engineering is relied upon every day for a variety of things: from supplying energy and clean water to our homes, to processing and recycling our waste, to finding solutions to problems like pollution, construction of buildings, bridges, dams, flood defences etc etc. Basically anything that is designed and built a civil engineer has been behind it. (Maybe this wasn’t brief LOL)

Over the period of my studies a passion for the world to have a sustainable future for our water & environment resources grew. Having clean, potable water and sufficient sanitation are vital necessities for a decent standard of living. I know that here in UK that is not a problem but elsewhere in developing countries it is. Therefore, I hope to be a part of creating sustainable water & environment resources worldwide in the future.

So that’s why I’m Green Ambassador! During the time I’ve been a Green Ambassador my understanding and knowledge of sustainability has definitely increased but still there is a long way to go. Learning from my colleagues and various training we have all completed has played a massive contribution. As a Green Ambassador we are working on a unique programme called Green Impact Enterprise which is an environmental awards accreditation scheme run by the university’s student union supported by the National Union of Students (NUS). Currently, we are attempting to promote Greenwich as a centre of sustainable tourism. As a Green Ambassador for this particular programme we offer businesses support and guidance, to achieve recognised Green Impact accreditation for their environmental efforts. It involves a lot of meetings with businesses and organisations which has given me experience I’ve never had before.

I hope to be blogging about the progress we’ve made very soon!

Thanks

Gabriel