Whilst a People & Planeter in UCL, I was always rather oblivious to the way that People & Planet was run nationally. Partially this was because I didn’t really know much about the network (we had just started a group the year that I joined) and partially it was because the idea of taking part in a national decision-making group was rather daunting. Luckily, in my final year, I decided to take a little of a risk and ended up going along to the Forum in Manchester.

Forum is a strange place. It brings all of the key people and planet individuals across the network together to discuss key issues. Overall, you end up having massive discussions, debates and decisions over the future of People & Planet and students involved. It’s a fantastic opportunity to learn how campaigns work, how they are managed and how you can really build and develop your own strategy.

Too many times in university, we organise our campaigns without strategy and without order. We play the campaign by ear rather than by trying to meet deadlines. The fact is we need to put the too together and we need to do that at a national and local level. It is so much easier to influence Oxford if you say ‘well, Cambridge/UCL is doing it, and we have the opportunity to beat them too it’ or if you show how the particular changes can be implemented within a given time and resource framework. This method also shuts up the nay-sayers in the university who may say that they do not have time/money/resources to deal with these challenges.

The Forum is the place to be if you want to create effective change, now and in the future. It is the place to be to take on a campaign and make it suitable for your university. It is also the place to be if you want to have a great party and be challenged by a very relevant quiz.

If you want to take campaigning further, go to this year’s Forum - this weekend (19 - 21 March) in Camden, London. There are going to be MASSIVE decisions made, so make sure you’re there!

Book online for FREE here: http://peopleandplanet.org/forum/10

Come to the Forum and have your say.

People & Planet (P&P) prizes itself on how student led and democratic it is. But have you ever wondered if People & Planet actually is the most student led and democratic organisation out there? Are there organisations which do things better than us? Can we learn anything from these organisations so as to become more student led and democratic. (more…)

MCs!

Ok, I know it’s a tenuous link, but they really do!

But instead of Microphone Commanders People & Planet has the Management Committee (MC); a group of young people elected by other students to make sure the network is being run your best interests. (more…)

If it wasn’t for The Forum 2009, I probably wouldn’t have realised what a great organisation People & Planet is, and I almost certainly wouldn’t be working for them now. I’d been to Shared Planet a few months before and had a great time, and I’d been involved in the campaigns at my uni, but The Forum was my first real experience of People & Planet working together as a network. (more…)

The amazing President of the Maldives has now not only committed his sinking country of the Maldives to going zero carbon by 2050, but has announced his cabinet will be meeting underwater! (more…)