By Laura Wetton
Our very own Greenpad team has won an award for the best campaign idea at a national summit.
Greenpad won the best campaign idea competition for 'Meat as a treat' at the Student Sustainability Summit held at the University of Leeds. The day was led by the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges and was designed to help engage a wide range of students with sustainability.
The day was broken down into workshops, one of which was held by the WWF, an immense global organisation working towards animal conservation and general sustainability. The award winning task was for the students to imagine that they had been given a million pounds. Students had just 20 minutes to outline what that campaign would be, create a pitch on how it would work, what they would spend the money on, how they could justify all that money and what their reach would be. The campaign idea would then be presented back to WWF.
Working with two other students from another University, Greenpad's campaign idea was the 'Meat for a treat' campaign. The base of the campaign was to change people's attitudes towards meat being relied upon and thought of as a component of daily meals, instead it becoming more of a treat.
Greenpad co-ordinator Katie Ferneyhough says: "Meat contributes to our global Co2 footprint. The population increases, our demand for meat also increases, causing animal welfare standards to go down."
The students outlined this in their project plan, stating that 'Meat as a treat' should therefore be used as an educational campaign.
The campaign was to primarily target young adults and children in primary schools, secondary schools and higher education. In primary schools, young children would become involved in helping to create meat-free recipe cards. In high schools students would design meat-free recipes or logos. University students created menus for union and university venues which would reflect more of a vegetarian lifestyle than a meat-heavy one.
After presenting this to WWF, the top three campaigns were chosen with Greenpad coming first.
"The day itself was extremely successful," Katie says. "It brought students together from different institutions; it can be easy sometimes to get lost in the everyday life of studies and forget about your passion if your passion is sustainability, so it was great to get all these passionate students in a room and watch them collaborate."
Greenpad are constantly delivering new on-campus events and campaigns to encourage more participation from students to engage in sustainability: "The next key event coming up is 'The Great Donate' - a donation project which will encourage students to utilise the donation bins outside of halls whilst encouraging them to donate things such as canned foods for the food hub," she says.
Greenpad will also be involved in the Party In The Park in Stoke on April 19th, where they will be encouraging children and families to get involved in sustainability. There will also be the introduction of a meat-free loyalty card into Union venues and a visit from a guest speaker from Greenpeace accompanied by a vegetarian picnic at the end of May.
After the success of the tree planting project, Katie confirms that there will definitely be more work on the nature reserve too.
"Since our tree planting event we've realised that students are really keen to do more on the nature reserve if we give them the opportunity to do so. We'll be working with the head groundskeeper so that students can get involved and do some practical conservation," she adds.