oikos Legislative Meeting April 2022: What decisions were made?

The oikos Community gathered online for the first Legislative Meeting of the year on Sunday, April 10. Decisions regarding organizational matters were made through a discussing and voting process which at which chapter representatives took part on behalf of their respective chapters.

The decisions on the agenda were amde in regards to the following voting items:

The oikos Annual Report 2021 was approved by a simple majority of votes. Following the vote, the report was published and you can find it and read it on our website.

The oikos Auditors’ report for 2021 was approved by a simple majority of votes

The new oikos International Co-president was elected by the community – Carolin Lemke from oikos Reutlingen was elected by a simple majority of votes. Her term as the next Co-president begins in November of this year and she will be succeding Sophie Charrois(2020-2022).

oikos Istanbul was approved the status of a full chapter within oikos International by a 2/3 vote of the Assembly. The chapter was first opened in 2021 and following over a year of active development applied for the full chapter status.

Chapter closures: following a prolonged period of inactivity by the oikos chapters in Bratislava, Edmonton, Leipzig, Luneburg and Vellore, the Legislative Assembly approved the closing of the chapter by a 2/3 vote majority.

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oikos International

posted April 26, 2022

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The oikos 2021 Annual Report is out

We are delighted to present the oikos Annual Report for 2021 showcasing our community’s activities and impact in the year behind us!

Read it here.

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oikos International

posted April 13, 2022

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New oikos International Co-president elected

At the Legislative Meeting on Sunday, 10 April the representatives of oikos chapters elected Carolin Lemke from oikos Reutlingen as the next oikos International Co-president.

Congratulation to Carolin who is set to begin her two-year term at the end of the year!

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oikos International

posted April 11, 2022

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Network for Business Sustainability: Expanding Impact

We warmly invite you to partake in a survey by our friends from Network for Business Sustainability, a global non-profit which provides evidence-based resources to practitioners working to advance business sustainability practices.

Click here to fill the survey

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oikos International

posted April 8, 2022

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Newsletter March 2022

Welcome to the March edition of our newsletter!

The month behind us brought exciting new opportunities from both oikos and our partner network. We are excited to launch a new crowdfunding campaign and the Community Impact Contest, as we prepare for the uppoming Legislative Meeting. We also freshened up the LEAP Program names!

There’s still time to register for the International Chapter Conference, while we bring you opportunities from IDG and P4NE, along with a survey from NBS. As you get to know all the opportunities, don’t miss out the latest Transforming Education Story, this month coming from St. Gallen and mark your calendar for the next CC Squad Call.

Read here Subscribe

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oikos International

posted April 6, 2022

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Kicking off 2022 cohorts with a fresh new LEAP

Our Leadership initiative – LEAP – kicked-off for the first time in 2015 and since then more than 300 oikees joined, shaping their conscious leadership skills! 

Over the years, we looked for ways to improve LEAP to better serve the needs of the community and society. Along the way, different sub-initiatives were added to the LEAP family. Read ahead to learn more about the different LEAP sub-initiatives and what is new for this year. 

LEAP Advanced takes up a new name

The longest running sub-initiative – LEAP Advanced – officially changed name to LEAP YOUth, starting with this year’s cohort. The old name came from a time where participants involvement in the program was divided in 

  • LEAP Basic – which was bi-monthly webinars open for everyone to join
  • LEAP Intermediate – that included the Presidents meetings (now chapter days) twice a year 
  • LEAP Advanced – which was the 9 month journey that we still have today in a similar form 

Nowadays, without this historic distinction, we understand that the name “LEAP Advanced” does not represent the program well anymore and we chose a name more descriptive. LEAP YOUth relates to the target group of the program – youth students and workers, with the prominent YOU aiming to speak directly to participants, addressing themselves and a focus on their personal development.

The overview – how are LEAP programs shaped this year?

LEAP YOUth is a 10-months transformational leadership program focusing on building capacity in the oikos community with the necessary competencies, qualities, practices, tools and global network to become conscious leaders in the co-creation of thriving and sustainable societies. For the cohort 2022 we have 46 participants from 29 chapters or partners and 64 volunteers engaged, out of which 27 are alumni and 37 are professional coaches. To get to know the program and learn more about it check this document. 

LEAP Researchers is a 9-months leadership program focusing on the personal and professional development of early career researchers. It follows a similar frame and structure like the LEAP YOUth, but it aims to support the development of master’s, PhD and postdoctoral researchers in the field of sustainability, who in return work in their institutions and together with chapters to bring change to education. They experience monthly group online meetings which alternate personal development sessions with professional training, an onsite gathering, monthly individual coaching and peer group coaching. The program runs from March to December with around 15 to 20 participants/year.

LEAP Life is an initiative for LEAP alumni & volunteers who decided to remain engaged with the LEAP community of practice to continue work on their leadership and coaching skills after successfully completing their LEAP YOUth or researchers journey. 

Informally it existed since 2016 with the first LEAP Alumni getting involved as Peer Group Facilitators. Over the years it grew to ultimately become an official sub-initiative with their own events, such as Input & Brave Talks. 

All events & elements are self-organized by the community and evolve out of the needs or offers from participants. 

LEAP Tools is a living set of resources and guides created with oikees to help our oikos students, alumni, partners and friends on the journey to conscious leadership. It is a platform for creating your own leadership journey with your community, counting on the support of the LEAP network.

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oikos Leadership Program LEAP

posted April 5, 2022

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oikos St. Gallen Curriculum change journey

The oikos St. Gallen curriculum change team consists of Luna, Robin, Daniel, Sandro and Carina as the project head. In the following, we hope to give you an insight into our work of the last year. The overview will be structured like our separate team responsibilities: Assessment year (Carina), IWÖ (Luna and Robin), Open Evenings (Daniel), Sustainable Finance (Sandro) and StartWeek (Luna). 

During our summer holidays, Anna, former President of oikos St. Gallen, had a conversation about curriculum change in the assessment year with the president of University of St. Gallen’s (HSG) Student union. To better understand the context: The assessment year stands for the first two semesters at our university, where every student has to pass the same exams in order to finally decide for a specific major in the third semester. There is currently a single lecture about sustainability in one of five obligatory courses in the entire year. Apart from this, we did not notice the topic being mentioned once in the entire year, sustainability is most certainly not integrated as well as it could be. The president of the Student Union liked our idea, so, in July, Carina organized a first meeting with him, Anna and two representatives of HSG’s institute for economy and the environment (IWÖ). After this pitch he agreed to introduce her to the heads of the assessment as well as one of HSG’s vice presidents. The second meeting in November and the pitch to convince all these stakeholders for our vision for change for the assessment required a lot of preparation, we put the final presentation in the appendix of this mail. Carina presented to them our evidence that there is so much demand for more sustainability in the curriculum and, to our own surprise, they agreed with every single point and had a lively discussion on how to make as many little (and later bigger) changes as possible!

Luna and Robin are closely working together with the IWÖ and started to scan all the course fact sheets to find out whether courses already implemented sustainability in any way. This being very time intensive and the necessity to repeat the procedure every year lead them to the idea to start the More is more – Sustain the change campaign: At the moment they are designing a survey for all professors to clarify whether they teach or mention sustainability in their courses. When this survey is completed, it will be sent per email to all professors together with an invitation to the Open Evenings taking place in March 2022.

The Open Evenings Event in March 2021 to spark the conversation about curriculum change was a success but the question of how to drive actual change from a student perspective still remained. That is why, in collaboration with the oikos St. Gallen sustainability week, we will focus even more on the invitation of stakeholders such as program managers and professors. Here, Daniel is coordinating the contact with the sustainability week and the speakers.

A Business administration bachelor finance professor reached out to us respectively the oikos St. Gallen sustainable finance team because he is trying to replace one of the case studies in his course with one about a sustainable company. Apart from searching for this case study, Sandro and the sustainable finance team explored the opportunity to create an own, student-made sustainable finance course. However, a new course needs to be registered over a year before its implementation which is why this idea seemed to be rather unrealistic for our one-year team members.

HSG offers the “Managing Climate Solutions” certificate, where groups of Master students help shape our university’s infrastructure in a sustainable way. One of these groups recently contacted us and asked for our support to convince the administration of the StartWeek to address sustainability in their case study (all assessment students participate in this week at the beginning of their studies and work on a case study about a global challenge). Luna will have a meeting with them soon.

There is a lot more background organization and administration necessary in order to make all of these projects possible. We are constantly receiving many opportunities for curriculum change and our strategy seems to have developed in a very emergent way. As a group of students with limited time resources we always try to focus only on the options that show that are most promising to implement real curriculum change at our own university. We are super proud of the work we do and are happy to announce that one of our teamies, Sandro Tissi, has most recently been elected as the new president of oikos St. Gallen!

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oikos St. Gallen curriculum change team

posted April 5, 2022

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Support our Rite of Passage pilot event

We’re kicking off our third crowdfunding campaign on Monday April 4th as part of the Little by Little Global Giving campaign! Global Giving will be matching 50% of every donation made until Friday April 8th up to a $25 matching.

This campaign focuses on raising funds for the Rite of Passage pilot event happening at the end of April at the Biofalu eco-village in Hungary. It will be a journey of growing up as an organization, and of taking more ownership as a team, to build the path forward for our student community & to support their transition from engaged studenthood to responsible adulthood. Hosted by professional facilitators, during 5-days of on-site event, the oikos team will be absorbing interactive practices & ways that will bring more understanding of the global & inner context of responsible transition. Reflecting on our role in the world, as part of an ecosystem of radical change, we will gain a greater sense of who we are and what is our long term contribution for a more sustainable future.

Teams’ Rite of Passage is a prototype and experiment to explore what this kind of journey could bring to our student community. Participants will gain a strong sense of their unique gifts and how these can be used to impact the transitions  we are facing.oikos team will continue to develop strategies for further growth of our network that is continuously creating meaningful contributions for a more sustainable world. In the long run we would strive to replicate this format within the community.

We count on you to help us reach our goal by sharing and/or donating!

Learn more & Donate

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oikos International

posted April 4, 2022

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Community Impact Contest – Share your work with the world!

Our diverse community of student changemakers is always thriving with action and innovative ideas towards sustainability. The work of our chapters, may it be recurring events or new initiatives, deserves to be showcased and celebrated. Let us introduce: the chapter impact contest!

With this unique opportunity to present their work to a wider audience, we wish to celebrate the incredible effort and the impact they are creating at their local campus and beyond. Our students deserve the spotlight, they are the inspiring leaders for a better tomorrow and their projects are just one sign for the unstoppable drive for change within our community.

In order to do so, oikos International has developed the oikos Impact Matrix. It is a tool to track & trace the impact of our whole community, with a focus on real-time accountability and the stories behind our work. Next to oikos International initiatives, chapter projects play a special role in this showcase.

The oikos Community Impact Contest is a fun, participatory and engaging way to invite our chapters into co-creating the matrix as it gives them an opportunity to share their most important projects. While celebrating each other’s work, this will provide a platform to learn, exchange and get inspired within & beyond the oikos community. 

To host a truly meaningful contest, we call you – all oikos Chapters – to participate boldly!

  • Participate: Hand in all projects that you would like to share with our global oikos community, by filling this form (5-10 mins). This way, you will get a chance to share the work of your chapter with the world. Tell us your story behind the project and inspire some hearts from the community. You can be as creative as you wish 🙂
  • Vote: The community will get to vote during the International Chapter Conference (ICC) in Graz (21.4 – 24.4) where each and every oikee will be able to vote online on their preferred projects and initiatives. The voting will be held online and available for everyone, regardless if they’re attending the conference or not.
  • Celebration & Publication: The initiatives with the most votes from four categories (learning, leading, living & organizing) will be announced on the last day of the ICC (24.4.2022) and will be presented on the oikos International website. There will be a special price for all listed initiatives 🙂 Only thing left : CELEBRATION!

Reach out to us in case there are any questions on: francois.bernier@oikos-international.org 

Let the games begin, enjoy the contest!

oikos International Team

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oikos International

posted April 1, 2022

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