By Salina Marshall
Sarah Dekerf hopes to get UBC students thinking about sustainability beyond the basics like recycling. “Sustainability is also about society and culture and history,” explains the fourth year UBC Faculty of Arts student. “It’s interconnected in all aspects of life.”
The political science major made the connection herself in a political theory class that included a discussion on animal rights. “We talked about the environmental effects of eating meat,” she recalls. “That really encouraged me to cut back on the amount of meat that I’m eating.”
Dekerf is helping others make their own connections between their studies and sustainability as a part of the Sustainability Ambassadors Peer Program. A sustainability education outreach activity of the UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI) Teaching & Learning Office, the program was launched in September 2012. Volunteers work with the Sustainability Student Advisor as part of a team to deliver sustainability programming to fellow students on the UBC-Vancouver campus. They also network with student groups on campus to promote sustainability education.
Ambassadors like Dekerf lead and inspire the UBC community to learn more about sustainability and to explore how sustainability principles and practices can be embedded into their own lives to effect positive and lasting changes.
As part of the program, Dekerf helped organize a forum called Conversations on Sustainability Education, which encouraged dialogue within the UBC community. On January 12, she will lead a highlighted session at the UBC Student Leadership Conference to further raise awareness. She is also working towards a campus sustainability fair on April 4.
Along with other ambassadors, Dekerf helps staff the Sustainability Education Resource Centre, informing students on what related programs and courses they could incorporate into their degrees. Each of the ambassadors contributes an average of five to six hours per week towards staffing, meetings, and outreach projects.
Last semester, ambassador Owni Toma advised another peer group, the SCI Team, on how to make its Get Into Research conference more sustainable. His recommendations included sourcing caterers that don’t individually wrap sandwiches and using wall projectors rather than posters at the event.
Both Dekerf and Toma emphasize how much they have benefited from the teamwork involved in the program. “We all come from diverse academic backgrounds but we’re striving towards the same common goal,” Toma says. “We all have so much to learn from one another.”
“You get to develop a lot of leadership skills,” says Dekerf. ‘You also get to meet really great people and learn to work as a group to get a job done.
The ambassadors benefit along with the goal of promoting sustainability. “If more people are taking more sustainability-focused courses and thinking about the issues, that can only be a good thing,” adds Dekerf.
Toma notes that since the program is relatively new, ambassadors have the opportunity to help build it from the ground up. “It’s a chance to become part of something that can become amazing.”
Applications for the 2013-14 Sustainability Ambassadors Peer Program open January 3, 2013. Successful candidates will start training in September and commit to a minimum eight-month term until April 2014.
For information on other sustainability-oriented courses and programs, visit the Sustainability Education Resource Centre or Email us for an advising appointment.