In 2012, Terry Sidhu participated in the IMPACT! Sustainability Champions Training in Vancouver and has since received a grant from The Co-operators IMPACT! Fund to support his newly launched project around sustainable transportation. Congratulations Terry!

***

Through my networks I found out about the IMPACT! Sustainability Champions program and felt that this would be a great opportunity for me to connect with other young people who had similar ideas about sustainability. I found the workshop very empowering and the facilitation was perfect. I found The Natural Step’s sustainability principles to be very developed and gave me more context to my idea of sustainability.

During the workshop I developed an idea about my university, Simon Fraser, and how lacking our current carpool system was. I was inspired mostly by the University of Ottawa and Vancity Credit Union because they both were tackling the issue of minimizing driving to their workplace or campus. I started out on my research and found out about how carpooling can be a major key in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is especially important in British Columbia because transportation is the largest sector of emissions in our province.

I was able to connect with a mentor thanks to The Natural Step and together we worked through many issues and developed solutions to hang ups students could have to carpooling. I was appreciative of having the support of my mentor when I was having challenges connecting with university staff. However, I was also able to work with many on campus organizations as well as a professional transportation engineer during my process.

Currently, SFU is in the process of making a more robust transportation plan and my ideas and research are being considered. This project has been very helpful to me because I was able to connect to so many sustainability professionals in Vancouver, BC. I am also more confident in my project management skills, and I feel very accomplished because I took on the task of calculating transportation emissions when others did not think it was feasible.

I would very much recommend taking The IMPACT! program because it is very inspiring and can give you the tools to work on a real life sustainability project.

• View The Case for a Carpool project

Written by Terry Sidhu, 1st year, Master of Urban Studies, Simon Fraser University

This fall, the IMPACT! Sustainability Champions Training program will be taking place in Ottawa and Guelph. Don’t miss this opportunity to get your project off to an accelerated start!