• UM Organisation
• Mission & strategy
• Facts & figures
• Rules and regulations
• Events
• History
• Sustainability
  • Mission
  • Policy
  • Department Environment
  • The UM Green Office
    • Education and Research
    • Operations
    • Community
    • Contact
• Art and Heritage Commission
• Visit Maastricht University
• Videos
• Social media

Community

Purpose:
Through the Green Office, Maastricht University pursues a bottom-­up approach to innovate itself through empowerment of its own student community. The extent to which this is realized distinguishes the sustainability efforts of UM from other universities, making UM, along with its PBL system unique from an empowerment perspective. Still, the success of this strategy depends on the quality and size of the community of civically engaged students. While other elements of the Green Office aim to channel student involvement towards the central level of university, the community element of the GO aims to nurture student involvement and to support projects towards university in a decentralized fashion.

Goals
Within this framework, the Green Office has formulated three goals:

1. An increase in civic engagement
2. Enhance interconnection and collaboration
3. Increase Effectiveness of civic engagement

How to get there

Collaborative info events
Bi-yearly collaborative info events along the lines of the sustainability BBQ & Info-­-Market to enhance outreach and display of sustainability projects and organizations. (Goals 1 and 2)

Volunteer matching
Targeted outreach for volunteers to help promising initiatives find the manpower they need (Goal 1)

Collaboration with MC4E
Round tables with social entrepreneurs and prospects for other types of events. (Goals 1 and 3)

Newsletter
Establishment of an overarching Sustainability Newsletter for all organizations, events and projects in the field (Goals 1 and 2)

We platform
Rollout and support of WE-­-Platform for organizations, an online collaboration and information-­-sharing tool.  (Goals 2 and 3)

Working days
Every two to three weeks open workspace with collaborating organizations and other interested people with on-­-site support for projects, skill-­-sharing and dinners. Kick-­-Off and patronage by GO, ongoing organization as collaborative effort. (Goals 2 and 3)

Community dinners
Social event for engaged students we are working with to get to know each other, build networks and exchange ideas every couple of months. (Goal 2)

Monitoring and support of ongoing projects
Differentiation between Green Office owned, supported and sponsored projects (Currently around 8 ongoing projects). Depending on viability consulting, matchmaking, skill-­-development and support in crucial project phases (Goal 3)

Sandbox
Initiation of new projects and collaborations, try-­-out of innovative concepts. (e.g. ThinkTank) (Goal 3)

Student faculty link
Develop a framework to enhance access of student initiatives to faculty decision-­-making and project development. (Enhancing faculty –level sustainability committees and governance structures) (Goal 3)