Nachdem die Bewerbungsphase der INEX Sustainability Challenge nun abgeschlossen ist, freuen wir uns, den Kick-Off der Lehrveranstaltung für den 8. März im Festsaal der TU Wien bekannt zu geben. Die Studierenden und ProfessorInnen der teilnehmenden Universitäten treffen erstmals aufeinander und beginnen die historisch erste interuniversitäre Lehrveranstaltung der BOKU Wien, WU Wien, TU Wien, Universität Wien und INEX, dem International Network for Educational Exchange, zum Thema „Nachhaltige Entwicklung“.
Wann: Montag, 8. März 2010, 17:30 Uhr
Wo: Festsaal der TU Wien, Karlsplatz 13, 1040 Wien
In times of the current financial and economic crisis, the question emerges which kind of growth we want for the future and which goals are targeted with it. The project “Growth in transition” intends a collaboration between people and institutions in order to shape this transformation process towards sustainability.
Fabienne Babinsky of INEX will be speaking at the Stakeholder Caleidoskope “Beyond Growth” on Jan, 29 at 3.15 pm in the Aula of Sciences, Wollzeile 27a, A-1010 Vienna.
Like the INEX Summer University, this program has recently been awarded by the Austrian Commission for UNESCO for its contribution to the “UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development”.
In the context of the session “100 ways to make a difference ” INEX will host a workshop on Feb 26, 9am – 2pm at the Europahaus, Linzerstr. 429, A-1140 Vienna.
Following the key notes on how learning experiences can change everyone’s life, the workshop aims to create an inspiring interaction between speakers and participants and will furthermore deal with the questions: „What difference do we want to make in the world? How do we pursue it? What impact did we achieve so far?“.
We found you… you found us at COP15: 150 committed leaders of today and tomorrow.
Even though the deal did not meet our expectations at all, we had the chance to join forces with all of these people, giving us the chance to speak up even louder.
Students from our very first program in 2005 had the chance to meet up with the ones of the progam we had in 2009… two members of our Advisory Board made it and shared their knowledge and wisdom in a very personal manner… a big part of the INEX team had the chance to enjoy the bright atmosphere together with partners and friends.
After this cheerful night at Reinberg in Vienna I would like to thank you all for coming and making it a splendid event full of interesting discussions, friendship and hope.
We are looking forward to a series of insightful gatherings.
The 9th Summer University in Costa Rica has again set standards in higher education for sustainable development (and was awarded by the United Nations for doing so).
Together with 4 universities, Austrian ministries and UNESCO we have completed final steps towards the 1st INEX Sustainability Challenge, an interdisciplinary academic course in spring semester 2010.
In spring 2009 INEX and AIESEC have created the SustainAbility Day and brought sustainability education closer to the students of WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business).
INEX initiated and participated in a great number of workshops and conferences (including UNESCO World Conference on ESD in Bonn, European Forum Alpbach, United Nations Climate Summit COP15 in Copenhagen).
In December we have presented the new INEX logo and launched a new web platform (including this blog you are reading right now). This also includes new content (such as a redefined INEX Vision statement), an INEX Facebook page, a Flickr and a Twitter account.
The INEX team has grown to 15 highly valued people working at the INEX office in Vienna, the Advisory Board now consists of 8 outstanding individuals from Europe and the Americas, and there are plans for opening a Latin America office in 2010.
We are happy to say that we have built dozens of new partnerships during 2009. And last (but certainly not least) INEX was able to identify, inspire, educate and empower dozens of young change makers with its initiatives.
A very big THANK YOU to all of you…
Thank you especially to our committed INEXers and partners, students and friends. Without you we would not have come that far. We would like to wish you a HAPPY NEW YEAR and are very much looking forward to upcoming activities in 2010!
If you have not done so already, please also enjoy our “INEX Season’s Greetings 2009″ video below.
In the last days we had serious problems with the application forms! We are sorry for that! I searched and did a lot of trial and error. And there were errors.
The problem was that wordpress redirected submissions wrongly. We are using cforms for applications and I checked and compared all settings but the issue was still there. So I decided to deactivate some plug ins and voila after turning off Redirection it work smoothly.
The Earth Charter, as our ethical framework is now starting a new communication strategy, with a new Head: Fernanda Baumhardt. Starting in Brazil, a TV spot has been published. Joint action of affiliates with the board is now called upon to take this fresh spirit back “home”, share it and live up to the ethical values of the Earth Charter.
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For the next day only a a small part of all accredited participants of COP15 were allowed inside Bella Center. It takes a so called Secondary Badge to join the next days’ high ranking political talks…
On our way to COP15 we brought an entire trolley full of buttons these two core messages. This shall be our guiding star during our stay here in Copenhagen. Trying our best to stop time consuming talks about facts that we all know about – agreeing to each others opinion, making us feel like we are good people. Stop – Blahblah… Get down to action, now. On our mission we started to speak with people from all over the world, who are willing to make a change.
The world is facing serious challenges. Poverty, diseases and the depletion of important resources are just a few out of many. On top of everything else stands one that will probably impact humankind more than anything else we have seen so far: climate change. To tackle the issues of global warming is the target of COP15 (the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen).
Many call it the most important meeting in history since the ending of World War II. It will have life-changing effects on 6.8 billion people, their way of living and survival. It has the potential of saving the world as we know it… but can the global leaders act? Or will they stick to talk instead of action? Will Barack Obama (USA), Jose Manuel Barroso (EC), Wen Jiabao (China), Angela Merkel (Germany), Nicolas Sarkozy (France), Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran), Nikolaus Berlakovich (Austria) and more than 160 other heads of governments commit to a treaty that will help to save millions (or even billions) of people?
Once thing is for sure… this 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the biggest event on this topic that the world has seen so far. One and a half decades after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro people seem to have realized the dramatic impact that climate change already has – and will have even more over the coming years. People therefore call for a fair climate agreement (see the Seal the Deal website) that will commit to cutting greenhouse emissions (especially CO2) considerably until 2020, establish a framework that will bolster the climate resilience of vulnerable countries and protect lives and livelihoods. In hope for justice and a prosper future 20-30.000 people will try to attend the meetings and side events that are taking place from 07 to 18 December. Ten-thousands of people are additionally expected to come for the hundreds of side events an d conferences taking place at same time (for example Klimaforum09, the global civil society counterpart of the official UN conference in the Bella Center).
What is INEX doing there?
We are following our mission of identifying, inspiring, educating & empowering change makers.
“We are committing to find 25 change making organizations to leverage our impact on society and a sustainable common future.”
By identifying these stakeholders and inspiring them to engage themselves in concrete actions (and joint projects, such as study abroad programs and other ESD projects), we will all learn on the way – and empower duplication of our efforts.
Follow us on this blog to find out how this idea evolves, what we find out on the way and how successful we are in accomplishing this plan…
