SuFuing in the city

4 SuFu Team members...
1 whole antenna working 24h...
A great team of participants...
The support of the Youth in Action program from the European Commission...
A big city to discover from a different point of view...


These are the ingredients for SuFu and the city, a seminar that at this very same moment is having place in Madrid. As we are more or less passing the equator of the week, we can say that it is doing very well. We spent the morning at the waste recycling plant of Valdemingomez; providing service for the whole city (4.5 million people), it is a small city on itself where all the packages and organic waste is prepared for being recycled. On previous days, IUCN speaker Russell Galt showed us the interactions between biodiversity and urban environment, and gave us the opportunity to provide ideas for the future evaluation system of urban biodiversity. We also could learn about citizen initiatives struggling with legislation to have the right to transform an empty space into a public open area for the neighbours, with vegetable garden, sport fields, and even an open air theater! And more and more activities that fill our mornings, afternoons and nights.

Here you can have some impressions from Filip, from AEGEE-Skopje, one of our participants:
"Great seminar, lots of interesting visits and speeches, and all of that in the wonderful city of Madrid. Love it !!". Anyway we will not stop working hard to make the second half even better, we are motivated to close the SuFu cycle with another successful project accomplished!

Now we have to leave you, here it is hard to find some free time :) Participants are now doing a Architecture Photo Rally...

Slow summer time does not stop SuFu team

Hello All!!

I am here in my Moroccan Mountains, tired after a full day driving my 4x4 trying to get some new information about my leopards... and in the evening, trying to revive this blog that has fallen under the lazyness of the summer.

But the lack of news here doesn't mean that we have not been busy! At the moment, the event Danube: Source of Inspiration will be closing in the amazing environment of Danube Delta. I am sure soon our Danube Girls will update you on what happened. And soon, second part of Danube Project will happen in Bratislava - Danube: Most International River in the World (Sept 7-13th).

I am busy with the details of another event, one that is my personal initiative, but only possible with the enthusiastic collaboration of my friends from AEGEE-Madrid: SuFu and the City, from Oct 31st to Nov 8th. More than a week to explore the role of cities in shaping a more sustainable world. 7 days full of workshops and debates, with plenty of visits and conferences, where I hope we can gather 25 young citizens from all over Europe who want to exchange ideas and discover the pros and cons of cities, the incredible power of active citizens in shaping the evolution of their cities, the trends in urban design and architecture, the secrets of urban environments. And during the nights, we will explore "the city that never sleeps"!

We have chosen Madrid because it is a city that has changed a lot in the past years, and more to come with the candidature to host the Olympic Games in 2016. A city with a great park in its heart (Retiro), with one of the best Underground systems, with an active citizneship and gaining multucultural richness year by year, and lots of neighbourhoods with its own personalities. A city to discover in many layers, like a Matrioshka, is waiting for you!

If you want to learn and participate in the discussions, if you have ideas that want to share, then you are lucky!!! You can still apply till Aug 25th! It is an event funded with Youth in Action program, so you may even get flight reimboursement :) You can get more information at the intranet, in facebook, or you can ask directly leaving a comment at this post.

Due to the transition between new and old websites in AEGEE, the best way to apply is to send an email directly to AEGEE Madrid (aegeemadrid (at) gmail.com), including:

If you experience any problem with you application in the website, please send us an email to aegeemadrid@gmail.com including the following information:

Full name:

Aegee antennae:

Studies:

Date fo birth:

Sex:

Address:

Phone:

Email:

Visum required:
Passport no:
Nationality:
Place of birth:

Remarks:

Q1 Why do you want to attend this event?:
Q2 What do you know about sustainable development and urban environments?:

Q3 Tell us something about yourself:

And now I say good bye, but before leaving I inform you that tomorrow is the first day of Ramadan in Morocco... Wish me luck!

Universities going green around the world

Last week I had the luck to be present in 3rd international sustainable univeristies' conference, taking place in Lausanne, Switzerland, organised by International Sustainable Campus Network. It was amazing to know that so prestigious universities like Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, etc are also taking direction towards becoming more sustainable. It was also nice to see that there were universities present in the conference from almost all the continents.
Unversities seem to be seeking sustainability in mainly 2 directions:
1) reducing the negative environmental impact of their buldings through energy efficiency, reducing water use, amount of waste, CO2 emissions, etc;
2) creating environmental awareness, involving students, scientists, management and local communities into common actions towards sustainability.

Listening to different presentations, taking part in workshops and just discussing with different university leaders, there was one clear message: students are seen as key part towards change. Universities are looking for different ways how to involve students more, as in that way it's also easier to convice other parties to contribute to changes. Also, this year, first 2 awards for sustainable universities (construction and impact award) were given out, but there is plan to create more categories, one of them being award for student initiatives. And btw, representative from Higher Education Environmental Performance Improvement in UK seemed to be quite interested in cooperation with AEGEE ;)

So I think that there is much that we as students and AEGEE memebrs could do to spread the idea of sustainable universities in Europe, to make our own universities more sustainable. There are so many good examples to show already in the world, we just need to make our voices heard. After all, universities as education and research centres can play so important role in turning whole society towards sustainability.

Let's get "Sustainability" in the Spanish Dictionary!

I want to share something with all of you... I found out an iniciative that links to some prevoius post fo Kadri, and it is quite interesting idea: someone found out that in the Royal Academy of Spanish Language Dictionary there is not a definition of Sustainability.

They used the technologies that are now available and created a website to promote the inclusion of the word with a proper definition; but not only that, they are also asking people to propose definitions, to arrive to a common place for such an important word nowadays. Because, if lacking a definition is bad, a bad definition would be much worse.

Here is the webiste just for you to look at (if you understand Spanish would be much better):

http://www.sostenibilidadaldiccionario.com/index.php

In the Galeria link, you can find other kind of definitions: videos , pictures... people is quite creative on definitions!

But I want to see that AEGEE people is also creative, so you can send definitions here or you can even send videos there to that website. I will translate the best ones and send them to the website, so we gain also visibility for our project!

How to define "sustainable development"?

I'm sure most people have heard this term somewhere. Another thing is to actually understand what is meant with it, and moreover how to achieve it and why we would even want it?
The most known and sort of "official" definition says it's "development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the abiliy of future generations to meet their needs". Lot's of broad words, isn't it?
In the survey made in autumn among AEGEE members, we asked the people to define it in their own words. And here's what came out.
Almost half of the answers mentioned that sustainable development is something keeping in mind the future generations, around 1/3 mentioned that it's mainly to protect and safeguard the environment. The 2 other sustainable development pillars (the concept consists of 3 pillars: environment, economy and society) were mentioned less: around 20% put the focus on economical development, and 15% to social welfare.
"Managing the resources" was also the keywords mentioned quite often, whether they were meant as natural resources or some other resources. As activity, desides using the word "development", respondents mentioned "efficient" or "rational resource use", "improvement of life quality" and few times also "technology". What could be also brought out is that the need to sutain our planet, world was mentioned more times than the needs and benefits to human race.
Of course there are always some more creative ways to define "sustainable development" like: "living without messing up the world too much" :)

What can be concluded based on this question? That in general, young people do have some overview what this concept means, the need to preserve our world for future generations and environmental protection as key activity seem to be the most important parts of it.

For those, wanting to read more about sustainable development definitions, click here. Also, a sort of speculation of the "official" definition can be found here.
Give your thoughts: how do you see sustainable development? Is it actually something we should strive for? How far can we actually develop?