2016 Sustainability Summit Aims to Inspire Future Entrepreneurs
FREDERICTON–This weekend, high school students from around the province are coming together to learn from experts and share ideas at the second annual bilingual Sustainability Summit organized by The Gaia Project and hosted by UNB.
The Gaia Project is a not-for-profit organization whose mandate it is to educate youth on energy, climate change and sustainability issues. They aim to give individuals the information they need to think critically and make informed decisions about their actions and impact on climate.
“Our main initiative as an environmental education charity is really hands-on learning, ideally inspiring youth to realize that change and prosperity is in their hands … long term, the biggest dream is to inspire them to be young entrepreneurs and take initiative within their own communities,” Kristen Nicholson, program delivery officer at The Gaia Project and one of the summit’s organizers, says.
Nicholson says that after a successful pilot of the summit last year they decided to scale up and increase attendees from 20 students to 80.
“Due to the success of that and the interest in it, we decided we should grow it this year,” she said. “This year it’s going to be 80 students, 20 teachers and roughly 25 different volunteers in different capacities. Mainly those are professionals within the environmental or energy sectors that will be volunteering as panelists, guest speakers and resources to the students that are coming.”
This year’s panelists and speakers will include NB Power’s director of customer and community engagement Michel Losier, mechanical engineer and green energy advocate Caleb Grove, energy consultant and Green Ideas columnist Carol Duivenvoorden, New Brunswick Green Party leader David Coon and UNB forestry and environmental management professor Tom Beckley.
Nicholson says they are looking forward to bringing ideas from these professionals to students and inspiring them to innovate and change their communities.
“(Caleb Grove) graduated from the engineering program at UNB and he’s now based in Mbissa, Africa, launching a project based around providing solar energy for people there who don’t have access to (electricity) without a gas generator,” Nicholson says.
“He’s implementing infrastructure there right now and running pilots as we speak and is going to be Skyping from Mbissa to do a presentation to the students and talk to them about his own initiative and hopefully spark the students’ brains and let them know that nothing is out of the realm of possibility for them because he was once in their shoes.”
The first day’s panel will address sustainable initiatives in New Brunswick while the second day’s panel will focus on careers.
“We wanted to show students opportunities that they would have within New Brunswick to pursue a career within the environmental sector or the energy sector,” Nicholson says.
Nicholson says there was initially some concern about attracting enough students from around the province to fill the 80 spots available for attendees but that once the online application was open and promotional materials were sent, the spots were full within five days. She explains that next year they will either have to increase the amount of spots available again or implement a more rigorous application process so as not to have to turn schools away.
Nicholson says she and her fellow organizers hope to introduce students to concepts and ideas they might not have otherwise considered and open up the possibility of entrepreneurship in green energy and sustainability to the younger generation.
“It’s really exciting and almost surprising to see these kids who are 15, 16, 17 years old taking initiative and actually caring about our future. I think a lot of time youth tend to get a bad rap: “they’re lazy” or “they don’t care” and this is turning the tide. This type of initiative is showing that these kids are smart and there’s a lot of opportunity here for not only great youth but great adults and we have a lot of great youth within New Brunswick who I think are really going to turn the tide … We’re confident it’s going to be a great two days.”