Sustainability Hub makes impact with students during TU Dublin's Sports and Societies Festival
The Sustainability Hub debuted at the TU Dublin Sports and Societies Festival this month, building on an already strong collection of student-led sustainability focused clubs and societies.
Healthy Campus, Green-Campus, Student Volunteering, and GROWTHhub joined efforts to create a hive of positive inspiration, education and opportunity for students who have started at, or are returning to, campus.
Final year Public Health Nutrition Programme students, Laura and Sarah, promoted health and well-being initiatives and resources, which are available through the Higher Education Authority (HEA) Healthy Campus programme. With support from the N-TUTORR project, both students have recently started their internship placement within TU Dublin’s Healthy Campus programme. Over 650 pieces of fruit were distributed to festival goers, and over 40 students signed up to the Healthy Meals Made Easy programme.
The Green-Campus programme welcomed 15 new student member sign ups to the already 66-member-strong Green-Campus Committee. Prospective new members were introduced to the aim of the Green-Flag programme, which is coordinated by An Taisce, and presented with opportunities of how they could enhance sustainability on campus in a meaningful and collaborative way.
Representatives from the Sustainability Team engaged with students during the two-week festival, offering information and resources around sustainable transport and mobility, decarbonisation, waste management, biodiversity, and opportunities to engage with sustainability education. The team distributed over 100 Smarter Travel for Campuses bike lights to cyclists, engaged in dozens of conversations around mobility on and to campus, and shared over 50 Make Way Day campaign bumper stickers.
Student Volunteering made great impact with students and inspired 147 new signs-up to https://studentvolunteer.ie/tudublin, where students can find opportunities to volunteer their time to worthy causes and charities. Seven student ambassadors were also engaged to promote Societies & Volunteering as part of the festival.
The Human Capital Initiative (HCI) project GROWTHhub recruited over 30 registrations to this year’s TU Dublin President’s Sustainability Challenge – Hackathon on Fast Fashion, which takes place 03 November 2023. Students were introduced to the 15 main initiatives coordinated by the entrepreneurial learning project, and presented with opportunities on how they could engage in extra-curriculum activities to help develop their entrepreneurial, creativity and growth-mindset skills.
Speaking about influencing students on opportunities around sustainability, Sustainability Events and Senior Media Coordinator, Rebecca Flanagan said: The Sports and Societies Festival provides us with the best setting to engage with our students on sustainability and to showcase the initiatives and opportunities available to them during their time here at TU Dublin. It’s a great time to have meaningful face-to-face conversations with students and to learn what their own motivations around sustainability are. We know, from data collected during their Sustainability workshop during Orientation, that one third of students expressed that they would prefer to learn about and/or take action to address sustainability challenges as part of TU Dublin clubs and societies.