Griffith University
Griffith and IYPF
Brisbane
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Griffith and the IYPF
Griffith University
has a history of supporting local and international community
endeavours, and the IYPF is proud to have been involved in their
community outreach previously.
Back in October 2001, when the inaugural International Young
Professionals Summit was being coordinated, Griffith University
provided an invaluable partner. Some aspects of the involvement
of the Griffith community included:
- Many organizing
committee members being students and graduates of Griffith
- The Griffith Golden
Key Chapter sourcing volunteers to work in the lead up and during the
Summit on the Gold Coast - as well as having published an article on
the Summit in the CONCEPTS magazine - an international publication
distributed to 100,000+ Golden Key members and friends every year.
- Promotions advice
from External Relations
- Lecturers provided
emergency fill-ins as speakers after September 11 and the Ansett
collapse meant that many of our original speakers could not attend
- Griffith provided
substantial financial funding for the event, from the offices of
External Relations, PVC Gold Coast, and International Relations.
At the World Summit
on Sustainable Development in South Africa in 2002, then IYPF
President, James Moody, met John Fien from the EcoCentre. At this
time, John raised the prospect of the EcoCentre offering the IYPF
office space within the center, without having known about the previous
GU & IYPF links forged through the Summit the year before.
Once everyone returned from WSSD, the arrangement was finalised, and
throughout 2003, the IYPF had the benefit of office space to use at the
EcoCentre. This allowed us to have a central meeting place and
space for our interns to work (who were often sourced from the Griffith
student body).
Midway through 2003, the IYPF and Griffith University submitted a
successful tender to the Australian governments' National Youth Affairs
Research Scheme (more information at
http://www.acys.utas.edu.au/ncys/nyars/). Since then, the project
has been working on producing a discussion paper on how young people
can make changes in their own consumption and be catalysts for change
in the wider community helping to lead society in more sustainable
lifestyle choices. The IYPF has delivered 5 capacity building workshops
with young people and their support organisations around Australia to
test different tools and learn about enablers and barriers that young
people experience in implementing projects to effect change for more
sustainable consumption. The project is expected to be finalized
in May 2004.
We look forward to continuing this fruitful association with Griffith
University through their active participation in the International
Young Professionals Summit 2004.
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