This year’s Mighty May kicked off with the fair trade campaign week, which marked the University of Bonn’s successful recertification as a Fairtrade University for a further two years. An exciting program featuring a diverse range of workshops, hands-on activities and a movie night provided a wealth of information on fair trade for anyone who was interested and invited them to roll their sleeves up and join in. Also on the agenda was the large-scale “Cigarette Butts Week 2023” organized by RhineCleanUp. The University of Bonn lent its full-blooded support to the event with a plogging initiative run in collaboration with University Sports, thus helping to remove scores of cigarette ends from the environment in a sporting fashion.
The Healthy Campus Bonn Week was also on this month, inviting passersby to get involved with its activity stands on health, sport, nutrition and sustainability as well as a special Healthy Campus menu in the CAMPO-Mensa canteen in Poppelsdorf.
The GreenBonn Hackathon at DigitalHub Bonn offered people an opportunity to work together on digital solutions for making climate-related professions more relevant and thus contribute their own creative ideas. This was followed by an ideas and projects pitch, where contestants competed for €3,000 in prize money to make theirs a reality.
However, the main highlight of the campaign month was undoubtedly Sustainability Day 2023 on May 11 on the Poppelsdorf Campus. The second incarnation of this event to be held, it was once again an unqualified success this year. Key players in the sustainable transformation at the University were on hand to introduce themselves and their work at a wide range of stalls and offer numerous exciting activities. From a smoothie bike, an SDG memory game and a sustainability quiz through to printed jute bags, the Studierendenwerk’s food truck and a mobile solar cell for charging electronic devices, the event had something for everyone once again and was rounded out with the sustainable songs sung by the duo “Ability2Sustain.”
The final event in Mighty May was the Diversity Days 2023. The Fair of Opportunities in the Arkadenhof at the University of Bonn presented numerous information and activity stands staffed by the initiatives and contact points relating to diversity and equal opportunity. At the same time, the panel discussion entitled “Diversity in German Academia—A Reflective Look at the Current State” provided some insights into the situation at German universities as it is at present.
Both the large number of participants and the hard work and dedication of all those who got involved and showed an interest ensured that Mighty May 2023 was action-packed and a great success. So we cannot wait for the next campaign month: Sustainable September 2023!
You can find more photos from the campaign month on the Mighty May web page.
