Year End THANK YOU

First and foremost, Happy Summer!!!

Kyuwon, Corina, Quinn at Block Party 2012

It has been a ridiculously long time since our latest update. We apologize. A lot of us got busy with end of term academics, helping our friends at UBCC350, going to Block Party…. However, this doesn’t mean that we didn’t have a fabulous list of Common Energy activity to end the year with! I want to take this chance to say a sincere thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone and anyone who supported any Common Energy initiative this year—from giving us a thumbs-up on Facebook to attending our events to helping organize these awesome events (Steering Committee I’m looking at you! ).

This past year has been a HUGE capacity-building year for Common Energy. To put it in perspective, the number of applicants for 2012/13 executive positions exceeded the number of members we had in September. Sitting on the hiring committee for coordinators, I had a moment of gratitude; In the coordinator interviews, there was a reoccurring theme of applicants viewing CE as a career-building opportunity. It was so nice to hear this because it was a sign that our efforts of making CE a student development organization has been successful. So thank you for recognizing that CE is a bi-directional organization—it’s a space where you can give your time and in return we help you develop professional skills so you can better execute your passionate plans for creating a sustainable community.

Personally, I can honestly say that Common Energy has helped me develop professional skills; To answer most job interview questions, I draw on my CE experience for the appropriate answer. Weather it’d be a question testing my teamwork skills, conflict resolution skills, event planning skills…. whatever it may be I’ve experienced it while working on a CE initiative. For that, I am extremely grateful. So thank you to everyone who responded to my emails, cleaned up the Global Lounge with me, treated me to a lunch at CIRS, attended a Big-Team meeting, and for listening to me rave on about CE through out this past year. While I’m sad that after I hit “publish” on this blog post I will no longer have any official role with CE, I am confident that the Steering Committee 2012/2013 is going to raise the bar to a whole new level!!

So welcome your new SC for next year:

Shiori Ito and Jenny Liu – Tangible Solutions Team Coordinators
Samantha Davis and Connie Chen – Challenges Team Coordinators
Abi Bradford – Education Team Coordinator
Maegan McCowan – Dialogue Team Coordinator
Corina Santema – Food Team Coordinator
Amy Jiang – Assistant Director
Quinn Runkle – Director

Thank you from your outgoing Assistant Director,

Kyuwon Kim (kyuwon@interchange.ubc.ca)

Now let’s make us feel all warm and fuzzy by doing a “YEAR BY THE NUMBERS”

• 9 Steering Committee members, over 50 core team members
• 1 picture of President Toope in a cozy sweater for WWF’s Sweater Day
• 10 UBC’s Got Skillz Workshops that collaborated with 10 different campus partners, and re-skilled over 300 students so that they can now reduce their personal consumption (For this project AMS Sustainability is flying out Rosalind to LA for the AASHE Conference!)
• 1 eARTh Festival- a unique event that engaged the fine arts community in sustainability
• 1 winner of the 2^nd annual “Do it in the Dark” competition: Totem Park
• 5 UBC Campus Sustainability Office Staff members to mentor our coordinators
• 1dancing grape in our Fair Trade Mob
• 400 attendees at “Chew On This: a week of perspectives on sustainable food” and at Oxfam’s “Hungry for Change” banquet
• 5 webcasts sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (George Hoberg, Michaiah Prull, Juanita Sundberg, Chew On This 1, Chew On This 2)
• 1 Highlighted Project Presentation at the Student Leadership Conference
• Over 12 Professors at the Lunch & Learn, gathered to learn about integrating sustainability into their curriculum
• 1620 bottles of Happy Planet juice donated by UBC Food Services that we handed out at the CE Booth
• 15 CE member delegation at the SFU Sustainable Campuses Conference
• Countless delicious potlucks, 25 beautifully silk screened shirts at our Big-Team meetings
• ONE awesome year (c’mon nothing like a predictable cheesy ending)

Earth Hour 2012 at UBC

Earth Hour 2012 - Common Energy UBC

Earth Hour is an event celebrated by millions worldwide! At UBC, Common Energy and The World Wildlife Fund of Canada are hosting an outdoor talent showcase with acoustic music, LED Poi and Hip Hop dancing!

So there will be FREE local entertainment, FREE s’mores, FREE hot chocolate, candles, fun trivia, prizes and more!

Bring your blankets, your mugs, and your friends and come join us in this celebration of climate action!

It’s Fair Trade and I Know It!

Our Fair Trade mob was a huge success with over 40 participants and over 500 views in the first 2 days online!

The mob was organized by Common Energy UBC in partnership with UBC Food Services, Campus Sustainability Office, Fair Trade Vancouver, Engineers without Borders, and the UBC Bookstore. Big kudos to Rosalind for writing the lyrics and Rachel for coordinating our dance steps! Thanks to everyone who came out for it and a huge thank-you to Sam Pat for filming and editing the video.

Here’s the behind the scenes, too!

And if you’re curious, the lyrics:

“It’s Fair Trade and I know it!”

To the tune of “I’m Sexy and I know it” by LMFAO

Yeah, yeah

When I want to buy coffee or tea on the fly

Maybe a treat, bananas and coffee can’t be beat, yeah

But before I roll, gotta check the label under control,

Fair trade is the way to go, it’s how you should spend your dough!

—————————-

Ya!

Girl, look at that logo [x3]

Ah ah ah ah  it’s FAIR TRADE!

Boy, look at that logo [x3]

Ah ah ah ah it’s FAIR TRADE!

When I walk into class with my Fair Trade coffee

Everybody stops and they staring at me

My drink pays farmers right and I ain’t afraid to show it, show it, show it, show it

It’s fair trade and I know it!

(Dance)

It’s fair trade and I know it!

Time for fair trade y’all, UBC stores be selling it all

I ain’t trying to preach, but it’s a big lesson I’m here to teach

It’s the way to roll, pay farmers right for what they grow

Time to switch, don’t be nervous

Buy fair trade, at food services

(Again!)

February events wrap up!

February is usually a busy month for UBC Students, who are all busy getting cozy with IKBLC as they study for midterms and then in between these study sessions students are busy making swanky plans for Reading Break. However, for Common Energy members, February was extra busy with a whole load of fun events!

At our monthly Big-Team meeting we all enjoyed yummy homemade stew and mac and cheese among other delicious potluck items. We then welcomed Tanya Bennett, a UBC Alumni, who was kind enough to run a Social Media workshop for the CE team. We all learned about how to effectively manage our multiple social media platforms! Thank you Tanya for teaching us about Hootsuite and saving us loads of time by scheduling tweets! Genius!

February 9th was National Sweater Day—a WWF initiative that asks people to turn down their thermostat by three degrees and sport a wild sweater to show that they are taking action on climate change. The Challenges team made wonderful Sweater Day posters (some of which actually hung on hangers) and ran an interactive booth in the SUB and IKBLC. With the kind donation of Happy Planets from UBC Food Services, the booths were busy and we were definitely able to reach out to the thirsty student population!

The Tangible Solutions team ran another UBC’s Got Skillz workshop, this one being a free knitting workshop!! The turnout was fantastic and the participants all went home with a warm and fuzzy set of needles and yarn. And of course, the priceless skill of knitting, which will reduce their personal consumption in the future.

Finally, Chew On This was a huge success! Monday’s event, “business case for sustainable food” was a full line up. Rebecca Irani, from the UBC Bookstore made a convincing argument for buying fair-trade. If you are sorry you missed the fair trade talk, don’t despair—UBC Fair Trade week is coming right up and Common Energy is running a Fair Trade mob!! Randy and Annie from Discover Organics gave us a first-hand look on primary production of sustainable food. Then Chef Steve Golob, the head chef of Place Vanier cafeteria gave us the most dynamic talk on what UBC is doing in terms of serving socially-responsible, local food. On Tuesday, Sprouts kindly ran a workshop about food-mapping, which was well-received by the audience. On Wednesday, for the panel discussion had over 55 people turn up! Then on Thursday the Oxfam UBC’s ‘Hungry for Change’ dinner went drew a huge crowd– everyone went home with a full belly and motivated to help out in Oxfam’s work. We cannot thank our partner organizations: IKBLC, CUS Sustainability, Oxfam UBC and UBC Food Services.

Check out the webcast for the Monday and Wednesday events below, sponsored by IKBLC.

As if that wasn’t enough to fill our calendars, we had a huge CE delgation at the SFU Sustainable Campuses Conference. Read Quinn’s blog post here.

Thanks for reading and gear up for a magnificent month of March! eARTh festival and Fair Trade mob is just around the corner, are you joining us?

-Kyuwon Kim, Assistant Director

Apply for a 2012/13 Leadership Role!

We are excited to announce that applications are now being accepted for 2012/13 leadership positions! Please see all information here!

Fair Trade Mob (March 5)

Common Energy UBC’s Tangible Solutions team produced the incredible Compost Mob back in November and it was so well received that now we’re at it again with the Fair Trade Mob! From March 5-9th UBC is celebrating its designation as Canada’s first Fair Trade Campus. See more info about the entire week’s events here.

Our Fair Trade Mob will be taking place on MONDAY, March 5th at noon. If you want to join us, come and meet us for dressing in costumes in the SUB meeting room beside the Deli in the basement. More details are on the facebook event page. The training day is Thursday, March 1st 12:30-1pm (for staff) and 1-2pm (for students) in the Vanier Upper Atrium.

Fair Trade is an amazing way to bridge the different components of sustainability: environmental, social, and economical. As the UBC Bookstore puts it: “Fair Trade is a different way of doing business. It’s about making principles of fairness and decency mean something in the marketplace. It guarantees the farmer or producer a fair price for their goods so they can live a decent life.”

And, if you’ve forgotten how much fun our first Compost Mob was, here’s the video:

See you there for rapping and dancing about Fair Trade!

The Sustainable Campuses Conference (Feb. 16-19)

The Common Energy UBC delegation at the SFU Sustainable Campuses Conference has had an incredibly inspirational, educational, and fun past four days! We’d like to thank the conference organizers for establishing an awesome balance between learning, networking, and having lots of fun (we loved the dodgeball “personal sustainability” break).

Common Energy was lucky enough to have 12 current members and 2 alumni at the conference. The annual Sustainable Campuses Conference is run in collaboration between the Sierra Youth Coalition, the goBEYOND Campus Climate Network, and the host school’s organization which, this year, was Sustainable SFU.

Our members attended workshops covering topics which included: Personal Sustainability, Community Mapping, Energy in Western Canada, Building Effective Teams, and Reconnecting with Nature. For our newer members this was a fabulous introduction to the campus sustainability community fostered by goBEYOND as well as an important time for skills building and networking. For our more long-time members, this was a great chance to reconnect with old friends and colleagues from other campuses.

We were also able to share our experiences through two workshops. The first was by Angela Willock, Rosalind Sadowski, and Quinn Runkle entitled “Student Engagement in Sustainability” which introduced the participants to the concepts in Angela, Rosalind, and Quinn’s research on the topic as well as taking them through the thought process of using a framework to evaluate the “level” of engagement on one’s campus. Two frameworks were presented, one which addresses student engagement from an institutional perspective and the other from a personal perspective. The second workshop was by Kyuwon Kim and Quinn Runkle which used Common Energy as a case study for building a sustainable organizational structure. Common Energy has been consistently growing over the past five years and so it was an amazing opportunity to share its model with other students from similar campus organizations. We even got to connect with our partners at Common Energy uVic!

We also want to thank the UBC Student Environment Centre for generously funding a part or all of each participants’ fees. We really appreciate this support.

Enjoy your reading week!

Common Energy UBC