ESN Padova joined the Green Month, aimed at raising awareness about the importance of leading a sustainable lifestyle and turning to more eco-friendly alternatives or behaviours. Sharing the main purpose of this event organised by ESN Italy, we decided to promote and two main initiatives.
During the first two weeks, we used our communication channels and social media to create weekly quizzes or polls, related to that specific week’s focus (sustainable mobility or lifestyle). Other than the questions, we also provided the related explanations to the answers, so as to inform our followers properly about the importance of sustainable actions.
On week 3, we organised a movie screening and watched “A plastic ocean”, a documentary on the issue of pollution and climate change. The movie was very realistic and down-to-earth in portraying the effects that plastic pollution has had and is still having on our planet Earth. After the screening, we had the opportunity to engage in a long conversation with the Erasmus students about their impressions, feelings, and attitudes
on the documentary. Our main initiative took place from week 4, namely the one dedicated to deforestation: we wanted to give our concrete contribution. First, our ESN section bought four trees to be planted in the neighbourhood of Arcella (Padova) as part of the Wownature project. The trees we planted will contribute to capturing 70kg of CO2 in a year, equal to the emissions of a 403 km-long car trip. Besides, we wanted to get our Erasmus students involved in the fight against deforestation and for this reason we decided to organise a fundraising campaign labelled “Adopt a tree with ESN Padova”, which lasted three weeks (until June 15 th ). The funds raised will allow us to partake in a project organise by ZeroCO2: we will adopt some cedar trees which cost 16€ each and the entire proceeds will be donated to the Italian Red Cross (CRI) to support and face the
Covid19 emergency. Thanks to a tracking system, we will be able to follow the trees that we have bought, via pictures and information about their growth.
A lot of students asked for more explanations or clarifications and appreciated the fundraiser, particularly the idea of being
able to help both the planet by planting trees and contribute to support the Covid19 emergency.
The overall feedback of the Erasmus students who contributed to this green cause was positive. The number of interactions on our communication channels was very high, whereas the participation to both the movie screening and especially to the fundraising campaign was very good overall.