Students Go Green
Turkey’s first inter-campus sustainability competition, ‘Students Go Green’, was made possible by the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul and its funding of the project in collaboration with Yeşilist and Koç University. The project is planned to end in January 2015. The first part of the project took place at Koç University, 29-31 August.
During the initial phase of the competition, 50 students from Koç University, Istanbul Technical University, Boğaziçi University, Sabancı University and Özyeğin University joined 13 students participating from the University of Chicago and Indiana University at Koç University for a 3-day boot camp. Students gathered together to learn more about building more sustainable and green campuses from a variety of mentors specialized in areas of sustainable consumption, sustainable mobility, sustainable food and sustainable design. Students also got the chance to learn about inspiring projects happening in Istanbul and to create their own projects to implement on their respective campuses.
Students from universities in both Turkey and the US got together in Istanbul to contemplate and create sustainable and green solutions for university campuses by taking part in Turkey’s first inter-campus environmental project competition, ‘Students Go Green’. The educational part of the program, which took place at Koç University between 29-13 August, was made possible thanks to the funding of the U.S. Consulate and the hospitality of Koç University’s faculty and staff.
With the collaboration of Yeşilist and Koç University, the training camp took place at Koç University’s Rumelifeneri campus. There were a total of 50 students from Koç University, Istanbul Technical University, Boğaziçi University, Sabancı University and Özyeğin University, and 13 students from the University of Chicago and Indiana University.
The participants were given a sustainability field focus, either sustainable consumption, sustainable mobility, sustainable food or sustainable design, and met with respective trainers to begin the education process and open their minds to new ideas and themes. They were later separated into teams and were asked to create their own solutions for environmental challenges on campus. The students had the opportunity to learn about other inspiring projects created by students in the same track.
The Students Go Green project aims to motivate students to carry out their sustainability project solutions on their respective campuses. With the help of Yeşilist and trainers, after the boot camp phase of the project came to a close, the participants are now beginning the initiation process of their projects on campus.
The jury will be judging groups based on their ability to involve students and administrators around them in their projects, their effective use of social media and the functionality of their projects.
After the jury’s final decision and the results of a public opinion poll, the winning team will be awarded a trip to the University of Chicago to take part in a 1-week summer program on sustainability.
The Dean Bilgen Bilgin noted, “Leaving the next generations a more habitable world will only be achievable when the concept of sustainability permeates every aspect of our lives. Our future leaders, academicians and entrepreneurs will be more conscious individuals than they are today with the help of this project.”
The founder of Yeşilist, Turkey’s first green guide and sustainable living portal, Ergem Şenyuva Tohumcu said: “Our aim with this project is to encourage the students to find sustainable solutions to problems affecting their lives. We think that the projects our students have developed will benefit not only their campuses but also the future of our world. Our only incentive is having the chance of seeing the change that the project we diligently designed and carried out will have on those campuses.”
Contact information:
www.studentsgogreenproject.com
facebook.com/studentsgogreen
info@yesilist.com
*The language of training and the project is English.
What is Yesilist.com?
Yesilist is Turkey’s first and only green-living and sustainability network and the country’s go-to source for anything and everything ‘green’. When raising awareness about the issue, Yeşilist aims to get organizations and individuals to adopt sustainability as a philosophy. To achieve this goal, Yeşilist identifies the needs of corporations and organizations and provides training according to those needs to create projects enriching both the employees’ perception on sustainability and the way corporations do business. Since the needs of each organization are different from one another, Yeşilist’s priority is to assess those organizations in terms of sustainability, and then to present projects tailored to each individual organization.
