TNS workshops at Sierra Youth Coalition's Sustainable Campuses Conference (Kingston, ON)

On October 1-3, 2010, Sierra Youth Coalition members will be gathering in Kingston, Ontario for their Sustainable Campuses Conference with the theme of Campus, Community, Change. The Natural Step Canada's Emerging Leaders program is partnering with them to offer several workshops over the three days.  

For more about the conference, visit their website: www.sustainablecampuses2010.ca.

Workshop descriptions:

Answering Tough Sustainability Questions

No matter where you are in your sustainability journey, you will get tough questions – some will be from skeptics, some will be from sustainability resistors and some will simply be from curious colleagues.  How you answer these questions will affect not only how others think of sustainability, but will also affect your credibility.  You don’t need to have all the answers, but you have to see the root question, acknowledge the validity of the question and respond.  We will go through several tough questions and then role play these with each other.

The Business Case for Sustainability

Based on Bob Willard’s work, this workshop will focus on quantifying the business benefits of going green.  Bob is a leading expert on the business value of corporate sustainability strategies and is the author of three books on the business justification for sustainability strategies (more about Bob).  Participants will receive the presentation and spreadsheet materials after the session via email to do their own sustainability analyses.

Beyond Theory – Implementing The Natural Step Framework on Your Campus

This interactive workshop will explore how students can use the TNS Framework to work collaboratively with key university staff and diverse student groups to embed sustainability into their campuses and mobilize deep change.  We’ll discuss The Natural Step approach, review case studies and look for areas where it could be applicable for students and what TNS can do to support students as they take this approach back to their campuses.  Students will have access to Sustainability 101, The Natural Step’s award-winning eLearning course or can read The Natural Step Sustainability Primer to ensure that they are familiar with key concepts.