We will be starting the roundtable in a few minutes, waiting for a few more people to file in.
This roundtable meeting is hosted by the Environment and Urban Sustainability Students' Association (EUSSA) and Ryerson's Sustainability Matters program. The meeting will be facilitated by EUSSA president Claire Stevenson-Blythe.
Stevenson-Bltyhe says EUSSA's main purpose is to represent the EUS program students but also connect further with the Toronto community.
Ryerson 350 representative, Kevin, talks about reaching out to the Ryerson students about the initiatives they want to work on.
There are nine Ryerson campus groups, including Green Meeting Ninjas rep. James Watson, that are being represented during this meeting, but there are many that are not in attendance.
James Watson of Green Meeting Ninjas has been working closely with different departments at Ryerson University to initiate more sustainable campus events.
There are a wide range of focus areas being represented during this meeting, including water, homegrown agriculture, urban forestry and sustainable university operations.
Stevenson-Blythe says that the bulk of the meeting will happen for the first hour, but they have the boardroom until 7pm.
Stevenson-Blythe opens up the discussion with a brainstorm session on sustainability projects on campus.
Ellen Pitt, Sustainability Matters website manager, says it's hard for us to reach out to every group. She says she feels like she hears about a new group every day.
Randy S'ad from Sustainability Matters offers the Ryerson program as a possible solution. He says they are growing the ability and resources to do this.
Pitt says it's important to maintain an ongoing relationship between groups to nurture engagement.
Fischer says that it's great that we're taking this leadership, but we also need a larger group to unite it.
S'ad says that this is definitely one of the functions that Sustainability Matters aims to have. The program is growing the aggregation, but it also it doesn't replace the conversation between the groups.
Fisher asks is there a pool of resources or a body of mentors that we can access for these groups. S'ad says that the kick-off meeting for Sustainability Champions across campus aims to fill that need.
Lynn from Bodhi Collective says there is a huge disconnect during these meetings in RU Leaders because there are a lot of lofty goals but there is no ownership beyond meeting discussions.
Watson says those who are proposing these ideas should keep the ownership so that they can be responsible to put projects forward.
Stevenson-Blythe puts forward for representatives to present some of the biggest challenges for their group.
EUSSA's biggest challenge is that they have a lot of initiatives to organize, but turnout to these events and student engagement is always lacking.
Watson suggests partnering with campus media groups to get wider promotion.
Fischer proposes having joint events to have larger group turnout to events, especially in small events being planned.
Fischer says that the Faculty of Arts is looking at their issue with space. She says they are looking for innovative use of space. (Ex. housing composte bins space.)
Ryerson 350 is planning to organize a workshop on Oct. 18 and are looking for space. Rye's Homegrown is also holding an event on October as well.
The roundtable is growing more animated about collaborating on upcoming events.
I am LIVE at the #Sustainable Roundtable hosted by @EUSSARyerson and @rsustainability . Follow the discussion here: live.ryersonian.ca/Event/Campus_F…by Jean Ko Din via twitter 10/9/2014 9:02:04 PM
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