Main Switchboard
01267 676767
Email Address
vacancies@tsd.ac.uk
Rooting for Change: The University of Wales Trinity Saint David joins forces with Size of Wales project to plant trees and save African forests
12.12.2011
Students and staff at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David are doing their bit to promote sustainability and combat tropical deforestation in Kenya.
The University has teamed up with the Lampeter based tree-planting initiative Community Carbon Link (CCL) to support and encourage the project by match funding each tree sponsored by the students this term.
With energetic support from the Students’ Union and their active promotion of Fairtrade, the University is holding a day of on-campus activity on 13 December, named ‘Rooting for Change’ to express and validate its commitment to sustainability. On the day students will pledged £1 for a tree to go to Kenya and this will be matched, £1 for £1, by the University.
The First Minister, Carwyn Jones AM, will join the events and will plant a tree on campus. He said:
"I congratulate students and staff at the University for their generous donation to the Size of Wales project. They are demonstrating not only a commitment to improve the quality of life for the people of Bore in Kenya who will benefit from the trees planted, but also a real commitment to the idea of thinking globally while acting locally. “
Jane Davidson, Director of INSPIRE, the new Wales institute for sustainability at the University said:
"The University has an important role in working with its students to respond to global sustainability issues.
“Rooting for Change' is exciting because it links our action in Lampeter with new trees in Bore as part of the Size of Wales initiative. For Trinity Saint David, making such links with the support of our students is part of our clear commitment to a more sustainable Wales."
Students have a key role to play in this campaign especially as it addresses one of the London 2012 themes of sustainability that they are promoting through the NUS 'Be a Champion' Initiative.
Abi Carrington is Olympic Ambassador on the Lampeter Campus. She said:
“This campaign means that students not only support Kenyan farmers but also they also help create an environment that will benefit students in terms of fieldwork for years to come.”
The CCL has been awarded £12,800 from the Welsh Government to implement the Bore Climate Change Adaptation Scheme. As part of this award, Luci Attala, a Teaching Fellow in the School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology will monitor and evaluate how the local community adapts to the escalating effects of climate change in a sub-Saharan context. She said:
“The CCL brings communities in Wales together with communities in Africa. Through this initiative, we now linked with the Giriama in Bore, Kenya. The Giriama are a small tribe that live from charcoal burning which leads to deforestation and the CCL aims to help the community develop alternative sustainable livelihoods.
“I will be researching into the consequences of this relationship between two very different communities, as well as commenting on how the enormous changes that are faced by marginalised tribal communities such as this one are being negotiated today.
Note to Editor
- The University of Wales Trinity Saint David is working with Swansea Metropolitan University and the University of Wales to create a transformed university under the oldest Royal Charter of any university in Wales and England outside the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The transformed University will serve the needs of Wales. It will be nationally rooted but will clearly have a strong international dimension. The aim is to create a strong University that will play a full role in the higher education sector in Wales and will provide scholarship and education of the highest standard for students.
- More information about the launch can be found at www.tsd.ac.uk – click on events.
- Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/trinitystdavid. Newsfeeds are available at www.trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk/en/rssfeeds
Further Information
Elinor Howells 01570 424 859
e.howells@tsd.ac.uk
View all news...
