Varaždin students organized a real sustainable festival
Second place in this year's competition goes to Varaždin, to the Faculty of Organization and Informatics and the FOI Student Council. Their project 'Green step forward: Days of sustainable development' took place in the period from May 13 to 14, 2024, and the goal was to stimulate thinking and ecologically sustainable initiatives with an emphasis on the development of sustainable behavioral practices among students and student associations. Over the course of two days, a number of green initiatives were held at the Faculty in which students participated in order to reflect on sustainability issues with a focus on improving the quality of student life and the community in which they live.
The main event that took place over two days was the Global Goals Jam student competition. Ten teams participated in the student competition, and their tasks were as follows:
- identify local problems related to the student population;
- investigate the problem and document it through data (statistics);
- explore alternative solutions and choose the best alternative;
- create a solution concept or solution prototype in a way that contributes to certain sustainable development goals.
As an introduction to the student competition, introductory presentations were given to the students, where through innovative approaches to teaching 'sustainable learning' and 'service learning', students were introduced to the way of thinking about sustainability when solving various problems faced by the community. Through 'service learning', students are enabled to actively engage in the community and apply their knowledge in the real world, and 'sustainable learning' encourages students to think about long-term sustainability and the positive impact of their solutions on society - said the FOI Student Council members.
As part of the competition, students dealt with problems such as student transportation, meals in student canteens, the offer of student jobs, and more. For the mentioned problems, interesting and creative solutions have been proposed that can be applicable in the intended environment. In addition, students gained knowledge, skills and experience on how to think about and solve problems in a sustainable way while contributing to all stakeholders in the community.
In addition to the mentioned competition, there were other interesting activities that attracted more than 150 students over two days:
- collection of digital waste (old batteries, mice, keyboards, computers, etc.), which is further directed to recycling yards, and as part of the activity, education was held on proper waste separation and disposal of specific waste;
- an eco movie night was held where students had the opportunity to watch a film with educational content that deals with the issue of sustainability and through which the importance of taking care of sustainability was emphasized;
- arrangement of green oases at the Faculty in order to encourage good practices of students in waste sorting;
- an eco game night was held where students participated in the construction of an ecologically aware planet through games.
*Source of information: Srednja.hr
