Hey guys,

This is Katie Luxton putting my sustainably sourced and ethically made stamp on my first blog post. My Monday this week started out as usual - dodging bombs and using human shields.

Yes, I am a female James Bond and I plan to shake up and stir the cocktail of environmentalists who are as eager as I am to help make life a few ‘Degrees Cooler’.

In case you were wondering, I am of course referring to the current environmental campaign for Transition Universities at People & Planet. The bomb dodging was apart of the People & Planet Volunteer Media Activist training I have just undertaken. My use of a human shield was a warm up exercise to get the blood flowing to the brain; cue excellent media ideas.

For me, the training was a refreshing way to initiate putting my passions into practice. I hope to raise awareness on environmental issues, but most importantly instigate ACTION.

I learnt more about ethical investment and tar sands on the training which was something I was eager to clue up on. I also found an excellent introduction to ethical investment in the Guardian. I am definitely going to pursue this avenue of environmental conservation further. I will keep you updated if I find anything new; if readers have any fruitful suggestions on the topic, they would be more than welcome.

I also wanted to say thanks a lot to the staff members at People & Planet for making the experience so enjoyable. It was a great opportunity to meet the dedicated faces behind the organisation, but also my fellow Media Activists; like minded people trying to make the world a better place.

Be safe, be green.

Katie

Fundraising on a bike

Next week myself and a friend will be embarking on a 140 miles trek from Plymouth to Penzance to raise money for People & Planet. We will be following the South West Coastal Path, a 630 mile footpath that follows the coastline of the south west from Minehead to Poole. The path is an official national trail and is noted as “one of the world greatest walks”. Our walk will be tough but the scenery will be phenomenal as we walk across secluded beaches, along high cliff and around the Lizard; Britain’s most southerly point.

We hope that our exhibition will raise plenty of money for People & Planet; money that allows to the organisation to run it’s radical and often difficult to fund grassroots campaigns. Money raised will help fund P&Ps excellent campaigns pushing the education sector to go green and fighting human rights abuses in university supply chains.

If you wish to donate towards our hike visit our JustGiving page

You can also keep up-to-date with our progress via our Facebook page and Tweets
Why not organise your own fund raising event? It’s fun and rewarding. Visit the People & Planet fund raising pages to find out more.

The other day I had a conversation with my mum where she admitted that, given the state of the world, she almost regrets bringing my sister and me into it. I was taken aback because I had never heard her talk like that before. No, I insisted, it’s not all bad.

People & Planet students protest against climate destruction, Rich Lott

Granted, a lot of it is - climate change threatens the world with intense storms, increased flooding and droughts, reduced food production, water scarcity, higher rates of disease, and millions of refugees fleeing from these problems. But crisis brings with it opportunity. It may be daunting that it is up to our generation to save the world, but it is also hugely exciting (although admittedly, I would rather that everything was all okay in the first place). Necessity will give us the opportunity to create a new society, and if you want one that is moulded to your own values and beliefs you had better sit up and start paying attention.

But people will never change, my mum told me, they are just too used to being told what to do. I’ll concede the latter; blame whoever you want – the state, mass media, consumerism, the parents – people are used to being lazy, apathetic and self-centred, and this needs to change now if we as a species are to survive the next few centuries. But I don’t think that the problem is down to human nature.

The problem is down to hope, or rather, the lack of any. People have been told what to do (or had their choices narrowed down for them by what is considered acceptable or achievable) for so long that they no longer believe that they are in control of their own lives. We are incapable of thinking outside the box, and no, the irony of using such a horribly cliched phrase to express this is not lost on me.

Lifestyle choices for graduates have been narrowed down to a ‘choice’ between law, the civil service and finance (the credit crunch has not done much to alter this). People feel tied down by their mortgage (ditto) and unable to take risks. Though most importantly, people feel helpless and hopeless in the face of the world’s problems. We seem to lack the imagination to envisage a world in which we matter, in which each of us can make a difference, but if we all stopped moaning and started acting on our beliefs the world would change. I honestly believe that. I believe that you can make a difference, and you should too, or else what kind of life are you going to lead? You can do anything you want to do, as long as you never give up. In the words of Rebecca Solnit, ‘It is always too early to go home.’

History shows us the difference that individuals can make: Mahatma Gandhi, Emmeline Pankhurst, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela… the list is endless. So don’t just strive for that big promotion, a new car, the deposit on a house; you deserve better than that. Aim high and help create the world in which you would like to live. And never give up.

I did my Year 12 work experience at People & Planet, the Oxford based student campaigning network in August 2010. People & Planet campaign to end world poverty, defend human rights and protect the environment, as I believe that all three are incredibly important issues, I decided that this would be a good place to do my work experience.

From the offset of working at People & Planet, I was struck by how friendly the staff are, I was immediately made to feel welcome and given a wide variety of things to do. These included contacting student volunteers, emailing universities about volunteering opportunities and collecting contact information from institutions. This provided me with a good experience of general office work, experience that will be invaluable in later life.

All in all my work experience at People & Planet was very enjoyable, I found the people there friendly, engaging and interesting and the work that I did was satisfying and provided useful skills. I would heartily recommend volunteering at People & Planet to anyone interested in the issues and with a desire to gain skills in general office work.

By Nathaniel Newman-Beckett

Maddy at The Wave

2009

September: Back from a wonderful summer spent frolicking al fresco amongst plants and such, the group meets just before term. With all the third years gone, there’s only a handful of us left. Problemo. To start some action, an army is required. So we hit the Freshers’ Fair with full enthusiastic energy and big grins to get as many new students on board as possible. We have no plans for the year yet, no idea where our campaigning adventures will take us, because these decisions are up to all of the members, including new ones.

October: At our first meeting we have tea and cake and talk about why everyone wants to get involved, a lot of people had never campaigned before, and don’t know about issues in depth, but that’s really not important. It’s the enthusiasm, the passion to make things better that keeps a campaign alive. We talk about things going on in and around Sheffield: the fact that RBS, with notoriously dirty investments, are on campus recruiting students, the lack of ethical food at uni, with so little being vegan or locally sourced, about the need for more ethical clothing ranges in the uni shop…..and plant some seeds of plans.

Some genius also has the idea of making recruitment leaflets to give out at every demo, so that everyone knows who we are and how to get involved.

November: We spend the next two months as busy little bees demo-ing nasty companies who dare to show their face on our campus, selling vegan cakes, holding talks about sweatshops, meeting with the catering staff and so on.

While our activities are all fun and good, we soon become exhausted, and we don’t have much to show for our efforts. Sure, every demo raises awareness, and is reported back to the heads of companies, and we have raised some very-much-needed funds for People & Planet, all the while having a whole lot of fun, but we wanted some visible results!!

2010

January: We organise a meeting to talk about ideas for a new campaign. We want to make a difference to the environmental impact of students. We want results that we can see. And so, inspired by Leeds students, we decide to launch a campaign to ban bottled water on campus, and to install free water fountains for everyone. It makes so much sense: bottled water is a crazy waste of everything. For 1 litre of water, 7 litres are wasted in production, 250ml of oil is consumed and 100g of carbon is released into the atmosphere. Add to that the fact that only blah in 100 bottles are recycled and you have a green disaster right there. And that’s not even mentioning all the money wasted!

March: We set to work on our ‘Bottle Out’ campaign.

Step one of our campaign is research: finding out all the niggly details about passing a motion, our university’s water policy and so on. As well as talking to people at the Union and Uni, the P&P office is a gold mine for advice and information on running a campaign…it’s what they do full time! We need to get 1000 signatures to bypass council and for our proposal to go to popular vote at the next election.

Step two is making it happen: we write the motion, design and print posters

Step three is spreading the word. Our recruitment leaflets combined with our high campus presence has been working a dream in getting new people on board and our team is strong. We start a poster campaign to raise awareness of the hidden evil behind bottled water and stick them up all around including in halls, using the same poster on all of our stalls. And, of course, we create a Facebook group to spread the word even further. 1000 signatures are gathered easy peasy.

And step four, getting the bottles out, well, we’re still working on that. Because of the way our union works it won’t be going to vote until September, but we have a great base of support so we reckon it’ll get through, and the plastic will disappear, replaced with fountains popping up everywhere. Added to that is the awesome strong group that we have built, with the skills and stuff to run a campaign.

Tags: 350.org, 38 degrees, COP15, Copenhagen, environment, Gordon Brown, inspiration, law, Mexico, Mo Mowlam, Politics, power vote, UKYCC, unfairplay, UNFCCC, WYFSD
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