Green Campus, Life Inclusion and Wellbeing
Led by the University of Primorska
Sustainable and diverse campus
We are promoting Green Campus Life, inclusion, diversity, and well-being, thus creating an environment of a sustainable and diverse campus both for students and employees. The basis for this is a long-term strategy and activities that can be implemented with low effort and high effort – including the development of green identity, enhancing diversity and inclusiveness at all partners and improving the campus experience and study/work conditions for the whole T4EU students and staff communities.
What we do
All tasks are designed to maximise the involvement of students – both student councils and other groups (ESN, tutors, volunteers) and staff with additional skills and interests (especially in the area of increasing cultural exchange – e.g. through culinary workshops, book club activities, etc.).
The tasks are also aimed at increasing healthy habits at work, focusing on improving overall health, both mental health and physical health, through mindfulness workshops and daily active break activities.
Key tasks
Green Campus
We have been putting our efforts into developing a green campus with a shared green identity and the implementation of good practices to reduce the carbon footprint.
Pictured: Wooden Urban Furniture T4EU AT the University of Primorska | Photo by the University of Primorska
Common Diversity Strategy
We have prepared the Common Diversity Strategy with a set of activities to enhance diversity and inclusiveness.
Pictured: Working on the common Diversity Strategy | Photo by the University of Primorska
Campus Experience and Wellbeing
We have been doing our utmost to improve the campus experience with socialising tools and the health/wellbeing conditions for T4EU communities.
Green Campus, Life Inclusion and Wellbeing in 2024
>20
T4EU people regularly attending the Active Breaks
43
visitors of the first Inclusion in Diversity event
We are proud of
Student Seed Funding Initiatives
The Student Seed Funding Initiatives required all the universities of the Alliance to align. The strong participation of the Student Council representatives was crucial in the presentation. Due to the specificity of the task (bringing together and proposing a self-initiated gathering of students from different universities), two proposals were received in the first call and both were accepted, which exhibits a good start of the activity.
Green Campus Strategy and Certificate
The Green Campus Strategy and Certificate was able to bring together experts in the field to carry out the first review of good practices and a review of possible certifications that would lead to recognised standards.
First Diversity & Inclusion Event
The First Diversity & Inclusion Event ‘Bridging Communities: Dialogue and Action for Inclusive Future’ was organised by the University of Primorska and the University of Alicante (task leader) at a joint T4EU Week by the University of Primorska and the University of Trieste; the event successfully tested the concept of preparing guidelines and manuals for a successful organisation, and the university itself found a topic relevant to the environment. The event managed to bring together academia and external stakeholders, attracting many T4EU participants.
The event was opened by a keynote speech by Prof. Dr. Vlado Kotnik, UP FHŠ, followed by a roundtable entitled ‘Voices of Inclusion: Navigating Community, Identity, and Challenges in a Diverse Europe’, moderated by UP FHŠ professors: Assist. Prof. Dr. Tadej Praprotnik; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alenka Janko Spreizer. The list of panellists included scientists and representatives of different organizations working in the field and presenting different themes:
- Borut Jerman (‘Empowering Diversity: Local Projects’, Programmes and Initiatives for Inclusive Communities, PINA),
- Maja Vranješ (‘Integration of the Serbian community into the urban fabric of the city of Trieste’, Uni TS),
- Zaira Vidau (‘Current sociopolitical challenges of the Slovene Community in Italy’, The Slovene Research Institute (SLORI)),
- Sandi Horvat (‘Being Roma: an advantage or a hindrance?’, Roma Academic Club),
- Dr. Marko Gavriloski Tretjak (‘Mapping the Silence: Exploring challenges and barriers for LGBT+ youth in an educational context Faculty of Pedagogy’, UP PEF),
The event was followed by a survey, showing that participants were particularly satisfied with the format and content of the event. All survey suggestions were carefully reviewed and implemented in a meaningful way in future events.
T4EU Monthly Sentences
T4EU Monthly Sentences aims to give a clear visual showing of the diversity of the alliance through different sentences translated into different languages. The original plan of posting the sentences on the T4EU website and social media was improved by preparing attractive short videos for social media, resulting in much better engagement. The additional decision was to make special T4EU sentences with T4EU weeks slogans, further promoting more T4EU activities.
T4EU Monthly Sentences reached 633 likes and 35.384 impressions on Instagram and 110 reactions and 3.349 views on Facebook (all 12 posts on each platform in 2024 combined).
Recreational Calendar and Active Breaks
The Recreational Calendar and Active Breaks were prepared in order to encourage staff (and students) to incorporate sports activities in striving for a healthier lifestyle. Recreational activities were implemented at T4EU Weeks, and the Recreational Calendar was successfully published on the T4EU website. As for the Active Breaks, there are 124 recipients currently on the T4EU Active Breaks mailing list (with the number still growing), and the regular attendance of at least 20 people (in addition to all those already participating at the University of Primorska).
Join us for our weekly active breaks (10 minutes of easy-to-follow exercises) each Wednesday at 1:15 PM CEST | Photo by the University of Primorska
We are ready for 2025
We have laid a strong foundation for further activities in the first year, and we will continue to implement activities and increase the promotion of individual activities as we believe there is still room for improvement. The first of these steps is the integration with the podcast content and reaching a wider range of audience.
Short-term goals are:
- increasing the number of participants of Active Breaks and all events (that will continue to be part of T4EU Weeks);
- increasing the number of student initiatives for student funding and launching a campaign for green initiatives while offering students a chance to provide their input to solve real-world challenges in the Green Transformer competition;
- creating more products, showing the diversity (e.g. cookbook) and an ongoing open format handbook of common T4EU activities (e.g. long night against procrastination, book clubs, recreational offers, handbook of best practices and tools to aid inclusion etc.);
- continuing with T4EU sentence videos, including different translations.
T4EU Green Campus Life, Inclusion and Wellbeing Team
