In AEGEE, April is one of the hardest months of the year. You not only have to decide what to wear, drink and for whom to vote at the upcoming Agora, but also for which Summer University (SU) you want to apply. In 2012, 82 teams of SU organizers are fighting for your attention. They have already been planning for up to half a year now and have created Summer Universities with a large diversity of topics, settings and themes, from tv show adaptations through funny pUnS in titles to educational courses.
All the same, a small group of SUs tries to combine a fun and adventurous program with interesting and creative activities by focusing on sustainability and environment. We would like to present to you this year’s Green Summer Universities, or 14 ways how to spend your summer.
In 2012, 14 organizer teams have decided to cooperate with the Environmental Working Group. To help them plan their activities and create an event sustainable in every way, a team of 7 motivated Green SU Assistants: Anja (AEGEE-Heidelberg), Annika (AEGEE-Tallinn), Athina (AEGEE-Thessaloniki), Hape (AEGEE-Aachen), Hector (AEGEE-Las Palmas) and Turgut (AEGEE-Ankara), led by Miguel (AEGEE-Alicante), is supporting them.
Even though all these Summer Universities share the same ideas: having fun on a green event, organizers came up with lots of different ways to realize them. Eight of these Summer Universities are Travelling Summer Universities (TSUs), which are trying to raise your compassion for nature and environment by showing you some of the most beautiful natural sites in Europe like the Canary Islands, the North of Spain, Italy or Central Europe. Two of them, the SU of AEGEE-Eindhoven and AEGEE-Tilburg and the SU of AEGEE-Düsseldorf and AEGEE-Köln, go a step further and, to be as sustainable as possible, do most of their travelling through the BeNeLux countries by bike.
Others concentrate on their local treasures and invite the participants to their surroundings and beautiful countrysides with their nature reserves around Pécs, Porto or Santander to show them why their regions are worth saving.
All Summer Universities incorporate workshops and courses in their program focusing on different green topics, such as water, food, and energy in Tenerife, recycling and using sustainable materials in Torino or tackling the issue of environment and pollution in a metropolitan area of Paris.
So, if you’re still not sure how to spend your summer, check more detailed descriptions at the website of the SU project at aegee.org/su.
Written by Hans-Peter Bretz, AEGEE-Aachen
Photographs from the SU 2012 booklet