Impact and benefits

The benefits and impacts of my actions are divided amongst the impact created by my leadership for Enactus, my initiative as Green Ambassador and my role as student representative.

Under my leadership of Enactus UniSC, we won 2 awards at our first National competition in Sydney in 2022. As a result, the University was keen to support us and we managed to attract more students, doubling our members from 5 to 10 students. The awards gave us credibility to participate in workshops and events thereafter and gave me credibility to transfer some of my skills and knowledge to my teammates. Enactus UniSC students report to have gained skills from their participation in Enactus: public speaking, increased understanding of sustainability, including the SDGs, social entrepreneurial skills, project and team management skills, networking skills, and the use of the valuable MS Word platform Teams. MS Teams is normally not accessible for students, but I managed to make it accessible by liaising with the Students as Partners office. Thanks to our increasing recognition at the University, we could participate free of charge in exchange for volunteering at a SDG startup weekend in August 2022 organised by Silicon Coast, a local tech startup collective. The participants gained valuable business skills, including building a minimum viable product (MVP), performing a market review, asking critical questions, seeking mentorships, drafting a business model, and pitching a business concept, on top of practising public speaking, project management and interpersonal skills. This participation introduced us to the Sunshine Coast tech startup community, which gave us access to professional development events, including FWD-fest (a 4-day startup tech conference held at the University of the Sunshine Coast), and 17x in Brisbane, a local spin-off of the global 17x conferences. This kind of events provided the participants with business and interpersonal skills, public speaking, networking, and sales skills. It expanded their horizons and brought them in contact with people from beyond our small community, which is uncommon for a regional university. Further, I organised app-development workshops targeted at transitioning from ideation to creation. In these workshops participants learned to finetune their ideas and gained confidence to turn their idea into reality. An unexpected outcome from my leadership has been the self-reported increased confidence and motivation of participating students to take up leadership positions within Enactus and beyond, confirming that they have been empowered and inspired by my leadership approach.

Secondly, when I was honoured with the title of Green Ambassador in December 2022, I knew that I wanted to make the most of my title. During the summit I wrote and published daily LinkedIn articles to summarise the key takeaways for all attendees and beyond, starting to inspire and empower the wider community prior to the end of the summit. As soon as we returned to the University, my fellow student and I immediately started planning on our projects: how can we bring our lessons home and empower and inspire as many people in our community as possible? We launched a survey to find out which sustainability issues people are interested in, and which barriers they are facing. Next, we created a working group involving staff and academics from all different schools to increase our knowledge and impact-base. Our goal is to organise a series of workshops targeted to upskill the sustainability skills of students, staff and community members. These workshops will be action-based allowing participants to practice accessible and budget solutions in the workshops to overcome the identified barriers of lack of knowledge, skills and time and money. An example of the proposed workshops is: preparing budget-friendly, healthy, low-carbon plant-based diets with students and staff from Dietetics in which participants can experience what a healthy meal for planet and people tastes like and how it does not require excessive time/money/skills. As a result, participants can take these skills home and inspire their friends/family/colleagues to embark on the same journey. In addition, participants are invited to propose and facilitate future workshops if they have a skill to share or detect a skill gap.

Another example is the creation of a public database on our website that includes all current on- and off-campus initiatives with regards to sustainability, so interested people can take part of a sustainability initiative convenient to their location, interests and skills. The flow-on effect is increased connection between the University and the wider community. As such, the sustainability actions of our participants do not start and stop at the workshops, but the workshops form part of the wider network of initiatives that already exist and are designed to fill the gaps.

Thirdly, in my Student Representative role, I was able to influence the accessibility of the online learning materials for all students of the University by liaising with different stakeholders at all the relevant governance levels, from Student Senate and disability groups to University Council and union representatives. As a result, a policy was implemented to ensure that online learning materials were released 4 weeks in advance (not at random), and there came increased awareness about necessary access features such as captioning and format. Simultaneously, by also liaising with academics and professional staff, we pushed for paid professional training for casual staff to ensure optimal quality of the learning materials yet not at the cost of staff. As such, thanks to a diplomatic, empathic yet assertive leadership style I served as a watchdog of equity, accessibility and quality of learning in the transition to online learning.

This connective approach resonates with the other impacts I made as Student Representative. For example, with the Student Representatives of the Science, Technology and Engineering (STE) students, we aimed to connect both the issue of ‘brain drain’ from the outback and the need for skilled workers and the issue of placement and research places for STE students. By organising a tour with these students into the outback, we intended to close the gap between both and create more connection between coast and outback. Unfortunately, due to the flooding at that time, the tour couldn’t go ahead. Regardless the cancellation of the tour, we increased the connectivity between STE students, and sparked more interest in the outback.

Connecting problems to create solutions is how we create impact with our Enactus projects. By connecting food insecurity with food waste, we create a positive impact at our university campus and beyond, by providing students (and other community members) in food poverty with accessible food, while local vendors will save costs by reducing their waste footprint. Similarly Connect 2 Country will benefit First-Nations and non-First-Nations students and community members by gaining access to and understanding of their own culture and the culture of others.

Finally, I know my actions have additional ripple effects of inspiration and empowerment on other students, which I hear when the feedback loop closes and one occasionally mentions ‘Because you did this, I believe I can do X’. That, to me, is sustainable and accessible sustainability. It is walking together and inspiring others to walk their path too.

Leadership and engagement

The University of the Sunshine Coast is well-known for its sustainability ambitions, and scores every year among the top universities of the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, which is why I have chosen to study here. As such my actions align with the vision of the University, and by my active involvement in distinctive levels of university governance I can continuously remind our decision-makers to uphold this vision.

What makes my actions different is my holistic and sustainable approach to ensuring sustainability is accessible. My active involvement in different parts of the University allows me to anchor my projects in the wider institution and ensure they last and create an impact beyond me. To that end, I consciously create structures and procedures to base these projects on, so they can be replicated in other projects and by other university members ensuring their sustainability and longevity. My involvement in multiple initiatives and governance levels enables me to develop synergies and linkages and increase the impact and sustainability of these initiatives.

Moreover, I hope to build a legacy that I pass on to the next student representative who takes over my Student Senate and Council role, and to the next student who takes on my Enactus Presidency. To that end, I built systems that can be replicated by others and ensure transparency in my communication: the Enactus Teams platform, a hand-over for the next student representatives, and the Green Ambassador website. Similarly, I emphasise in our Enactus projects to apply framework and systems thinking by finding ways for the projects to be upscaled and replicated by others, beyond our current scope, and to connect with Enactus teams across Australia to build a solid base embedded in the larger framework.

In addition, to value the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability, I liaise between the different schools of the University, have students from different schools involved in the projects, as reflected in our Enactus teams and our Green Ambassador working group. Sustainability should be an integral part of everything we do. This approach sets me apart as too often sustainability and universities, including ours, are siloed and have artificial boundaries between the different schools, creating barriers that undermine sustainability.

Lastly, my focus is on solutions, on taking action and ‘inspiring’ sustainability. The projects I run are action-based and intend to upskill participants so they can create even bigger waves of change. That to me is sustainability: actions and impacts that last beyond me and beyond the project.