Communication for global thinking

Author : Simon Schneebeli
Date added : 2003-09-25

Brief Project Background

Several student communities active in the field of sustainable development gathered together in 2001 to form the World Student Community for Sustainable Development WSC-SD. Most activities are based on or involve communication. One is an online magazine. But generally we aim the creation of an online community of students interested in sustainable development. One of our priorities is to create conditions that are favourable for initiatives from students from developing countries.

Maybe our main motivation is that we still believe that there is a way to change our world. In any case we are convinced that we too have our responsibility for the evolution of our world and that we have to take this seriously.

We, that is the World Student Community for Sustainable Development WSC-SD, a young alliance of student groups from six different universities. We want to implement the concept of sustainability in all levels of education, research, business and public policy. What we do in the WSC-SC can be summarised as the »Global thinking” part of »Think globally, act locally”. We want to make knowledge available and promote an international debate on different aspects of sustainable development. And our main tool is the internet.

However, the tools that we use are not even that innovative. When we started all the communication was done simply by email. Soon a simple webpage was added. That’s all. A simple mailinglist linked the students from Tokyo to MIT and from Ivory Coast via Switzerland to Göteborg, Sweden

But you can imagine, that it is not always easy to move on when you try to bring together people from so different cultures. Thus our main problem were not really of technical nature, but social. Thus our main efforts are spend on finding ways to deal with these.

Results

However the time spent on dealing with technical matters has not to be neglected either. Our webpage has improved a lot, and work is still going on. Two important aspects have been added: First we have installed a groupware tool on our webserver. This is an extremely useful way to improve internal communication. Instead of having every now and then an email on the mailinglist to discuss important issues, the discussion is now concentrated on one webpage and classified by heather. Other useful functions of the groupware tool are a calendar, a chat room and webpage to share files.

The other important feature that we have recently added to our homepage is an online magazine. We call it E-Journal. The basic idea was to publish news about the student communities that are member of the WSC-SD, as well as the different committees of the WSC-SD. This way we tighten the link between us as we improve transparency.

But we also publish articles and papers about research and activities undertaken by students not only of our student communities. The main point is that it has to be linked to sustainable development. Thus we hope making well founded knowledge available to everyone. The webpage also allows to post comments on the articles. This way the readers can easily interact with is.

I should tell you some more about who is in this student alliance. By now, there are six student communities that are member of the alliance. There are students from the famous MIT, others from Tokyo, one group is from Göteborg in Sweden and two are in Switzerland. Finally there is one student group in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The situation of this student community is of course completely different from the others. This makes that their priorities are different.

In March this year we held our annual meeting at the University in Tokyo. A part of the money we got from our sponsors was for financing the participation of three students from Abidjan. What happened after is rather sad. One of them, he was working on his PhD did not return to his country. The future there, even without studies, without family and friends, with no-one understanding him, seemed to him to be more attractive than to stay in Ivory Coast.

Lessons

This incident - the student not returning to his country - made us rework our strategy towards students from developing countries. We think that we can not reach a sustainable development, if we can not reach it with them. That is why this is one of our priorities. But from making it a priority to implement concrete measures it is a far way. What can we do as students?

The discussion on this point is not yet over. Exams always interrupt our activities from time to time. But here are some points that seem important to us:

First of all we think that there is not much sense to promote any initiative that does not come from within. Thus what we try now is to reduce our activities and to create an environment that is favourable for local activities. Again everything starts at communication and communication needs technology.

We focus on universities. We try to find active student communities. If there are interesting projects, we first of all spread the news of it through our online magazine. If this contact goes on, that means if there is a way to communicate with these students, a new phase can begin where we try to find ways how we can support the project.

Development Impacts

Is this all we can do? We dream of more, like international projects, an online community for sustainable development, conferences and real projects in developing countries itself, and finally a better world. We make communication tools available. The problem is then to find people who really use them. Once this done, there are some chances that we really understand each others. And just once we understand each others, we can move forward to new projects.

Project Information

Organisation : World Student Community for Sustainable Development WSC-SD
URL : http://www.wscsd.org
Total budget in US$ : Non
Country of activity: Ivory Coast [IC]

Are there any partners involved : No

Contact Information

Simon Schneebeli
simon.schneebeli@epfl.ch
Ch. Des Berges 12 / 103, 1022, Chavannes, + 41- 79 - 570 21 47

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