Why are you standing to be a People & Planet student trustee?

As a People and Planet trustee, I would be able to dedicate my time and brain space to supporting a cause I care about. This is something I strive for in all areas of my life, and I’d be honoured to contribute to the work People and Planet does to create a fairer society, and protect the planet we live upon.

I really resonate with the educational orientation of People and Planet, both via the provision of training and mentorship, and by targeting campaigns at educational institutions. My academic studies in Education have taught me a lot about the power of these institutions. Injustices embedded in education are likely to creep into the rest of society, but also, when change and breakthroughs happen in universities, they have far reaching present and future impacts. I’d love to support People and Planet in helping students harness the tremendous social and financial power that universities have, and use it to uphold social and environmental justice.

From a personal perspective, it would be amazing to connect with people who share my values. I’d love to learn more about how People and Planet operates and is governed, and to learn not only by observing but by participating in those processes. If I were to be elected as a trustee, I would aim to hold my direct experiences of student activism close, while having the perspective to zoom out and think more broadly about how and when campaigning works best.

What skills and experience would you bring to the role?

For the past year and a half, I’ve been a member of Cambridge Climate Justice, a campaign group that works with People and Planet on Fossil Free Research and Careers. I’ve been involved in organising rallies, facilitating meetings, speaking to students about our campaigns, and drafting press releases amongst other things!

I developed my skills at navigating university bureaucracy as a member of the Student Liaison Committee within my university faculty, where I worked to change accessibility policies to better suit student demands. Through this experience, as well as in climate campaigning, I have learned the importance of knowing about the complex histories and systems at play when challenging university policies. In university and activism meetings alike, understanding the perspectives of those who have different views is vital to allow for collaboration, and creating meetings that involve action as well as stalemate discussions.

I've been interested recently in livening up Cambridge Climate Justice’s social media, and have helped create striking posts with visual design and words that stick. I’ve enjoyed working out how to create a moment of reflection in the busy, scrolling student mind. I also ran a zine-making workshop where we hand crafted mini-booklets about our campaigns, which we then photocopied to hand out to students at actions and freshers fairs. I think a lot about what it means to effectively communicate complex ideas, and I’d bring these skills to a student trustee role, allowing me to articulate my own perspective in tandem with representing student views.

How do your values align with those of People & Planet?

As I try and envision a future world, I feel confident that we’ll need more of the networks and communities that People and Planet are building. Sharing knowledge, resources, and simply providing supportive relationships are all vital components to successful activism, and this is needed in student groups perhaps more than anywhere else.

Students often feel totally disconnected from those with institutional power, because young people’s voices are so frequently excluded from decision-making processes, or are only consulted tokenistically. However, I really believe in the power of students’ creative energy, especially when it comes to innovating outside of the status quo. I think educational systems can truly benefit from holding an openness to what young people are saying about it.

At the same time, I think students truly benefit from engaging in campaigning for change. I know so many students who understandably slide into apathy when confronted with the bleakness of the news cycle, and good news about the climate is especially hard to find. But starting climate campaigning has transformed my feelings about the world, even though what we're doing is at such a local scale. It has instilled in me that finding hope is directly connected to taking action. People and Planet are providing a framework for more students to engage in taking action, to become active citizens in their universities and colleges, as well as globally. This is a project I ardently believe in, and I am keen to support wherever I can.

Follow Bethany's campaign:

Instagram: @cambridgeclimatejustice

Why are you standing to be a People & Planet student trustee?

I’ve been a student climate activist for three years, campaigning around Fossil Free Careers as well as the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, Durham Dump Barclays, air pollution, food waste, and more. I know the power of student activism as a radical driving force for change in the UK. I also know the hugely valuable role student organising plays in empowering young people like ourselves and giving us the skills to become lifelong activists.

I’ve been privileged to experience this empowerment in my own time at university through People & Planet. The Fossil Free Careers campaign was my introduction to climate organising. I still remember my first training workshop with People & Planet and how important their support was for my first tentative campaign steps.

Being a student trustee would be an opportunity for me to contribute back to an organisation that has given me so much, and a chance to use my skills and energy to support the wider student movement which I am immensely proud to be a part of.

After having been involved in strategizing around People & Planet campaigns at a local and university level for the last three years, I’d love to get more involved in overseeing the long-term strategy and governance of People & Planet at a national level, making sure that student perspectives continue to be centred. I’m particularly passionate about student training and would love to get stuck into helping improve what People & Planet can offer students.

What skills and experience would you bring to the role?

Having spent a year co-leading Durham’s climate justice society, I know the challenges student activists face and the amount of work campaigning requires. This includes the work involved in visible actions (like organising protests, passing SU motions, and working with newspapers) and in building and supporting community amid increasingly dark times and often hostile university environments. I’d use this experience to help ensure student campaigner needs and challenges are centred in People & Planet decision-making.

As well as campaigning experience, I also have the skills to be a great trustee. I’m confident working with organisational policies having written many policies including a code of ethics and policy against greenwashing while working for a green tech marketing start-up. I also have experience holding organisations accountable and would do no less for People & Planet. For example, while working in the same start-up role, to ensure the policy against greenwashing was being followed, I had to challenge my employer about their plans to work with Barclays. It was not an easy discussion, but they ended up not taking the work!

Finally, I also have experience contributing to working groups and am comfortable understanding budgets. During my placement year at the Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra), I worked in the social research ethics working group leading a review of Defra’s research ethical approval process. I was also responsible for managing the finances of a contract worth over £100,000.

How do your values align with those of People & Planet?

As students, we deserve institutions that are just, transparent, and that actually act like they care about our futures! I’m passionate about all the work People & Planet does on campaigns and the university league as I believe that it is through student power and accountability that we can bring about change at our universities.

I love how People & Planet centres the voices and leadership of students in bringing about this change. We students understand best the frustrations of negotiating university systems (shout out Durham Careers Service) and the challenges of building student engagement in an issue. I would love to play my part in bringing these perspectives to all decision-making as a trustee.

I’m also aligned to People & Planet in my commitment to not reproducing the systems of harm that we’re trying to dismantle in my organising. People & Planet's values of inclusivity and intersectionality feel particularly fundamental to me. As a queer woman, it’s hard not to appreciate how vital it is to create a movement that is welcoming of everyone and that understands how all struggles intersect. This is also why People & Planet’s valuing of solidarity is so important to me. Our activism must be decolonial and work for the collective liberation of all.

I’ve spent my degree studying climate activism, climate justice, decolonisation, and developing a radical politics dedicated to building a more just and compassionate world. These values would be central to all my work as a trustee.

Follow Poppy's campaign:

Instagram: @eco_durham

Why are you standing to be a People & Planet student trustee?

Hi, I’m Will (he/him)! I’m 20 and a geography student. I have a decade’s experience in campaigning and youth democracy, and am dedicated to environmental, social, racial and economic justice.

Have you ever been swallowed by a wave of hopelessness, guilt and responsibility when someone says to you: “The world’s a bit crap right now but I’m sure your generation will fix it”? I know I have.

While it can seem like whatever we do makes no difference, I know that student-led activism gets results and nowhere is this clearer than People & Planet. We need coordinated and hopeful campaigns for environmental and social justice. Radical alternatives are possible if we keep up the pressure on those in power.

I’m a member of Cambridge Climate Justice, which, alongside other environmental groups and local people, persuaded the University of Cambridge to commit to divesting from fossil fuels. This was only achieved after years of work by many people. Change does not happen overnight - the university continues to evade and delay and so we continue to campaign and challenge.

People & Planet demonstrates that systemic change is only possible if we work in solidarity with other students and campaigns, and with those affected by injustice. I would be honoured to be part of this as a student trustee.

What skills and experience would you bring to the role?

I am methodical and get things done, as well as being deeply invested in the issues I campaign on. Through Cambridge Climate Justice, I have helped organise campaigns on Fossil Free Research and Fossil Free Careers. I have also organised and spoken at several rallies. Better collaboration between student campaign groups is key to holding institutions to account and I have also supported connections between students and local people.

I was part of a small team of volunteers that published the 2024 Cambridge results for the Climate League of Oxford and Cambridge, ranking all 31 Cambridge colleges on their sustainability policies. This has galvanised campaigns demanding colleges improve their transparency and take just and effective climate action, as well as making the university even more aware that students will not stand for their hypocrisy.

I love working with others and have been involved with youth democracy and campaigning for a decade. As a member of my local youth council, I helped persuade North Tyneside Council to declare a climate emergency in 2019. I also organised gatherings of pupils from schools across my borough to talk about discrimination, and supported discussions amongst young people and elected leaders on how our local area could better promote equality and diversity.

At university I organised a conference for students, staff and the public, involving a range of speakers and workshops on subjects such as environmental justice; global food insecurity; and education and empowerment as drivers for climate action.

How do your values align with those of People & Planet?

My experience in student campaigning, activism and youth democracy has shaped my values. Long-lasting change is only possible through democratic action. Calls for change by politicians and big business often ring hollow because in reality this benefits only a select few. Campaigns that are empowered and empowering, are the only way to ensure justice.

It is fundamental that students and young people are supported in every way possible, to campaign for collective liberation on the issues that matter to them. It is also key that campaigns for environmental, social, racial and economic justice are truly international and work in partnership with affected communities.

Student-led activism gets results. Results get justice. Justice gives hope.

Follow Will's campaign:

Instagram: @cambridgeclimatejustice

Why are you standing to be a People & Planet student trustee?

I am applying to be a student trustee because I want to put my skills to work in a more substantial way within the organisation, continuing to empower student voice and activism, supporting the climate justice movements, and learn more about how charities work behind the scenes, including their financial and legal requirements, as this is very new to me. I want to seize any opportunity to get more formal involvement in environmental activism and training to support the campaigns I am already involved in and might join in the future, and to help support people and planet itself through reflection on my own experiences as a student campaigner.

I want to gain the skills needed to sustain campaigns and transfer to full time employment, as I think it will empower me and build my confidence further, which I already credit to being in climate movements. Through engaging the the fossil free careers campaign, I have already felt very boosted and motivated, and I want to see how I can extend this sense of empowerment to other students nationally.

I think that becoming a student trustee is also a fantastic opportunity to learn about other campaigns, as well as contribute to campaign strategy decisions. I would love to get involved in event planning focused on the people and planet campaigns too, to help foster a national sense of community amongst student activists.

What skills and experience would you bring to the role?

I have a lot of experiences which I believe are highly relevant to this role. For example, I have been coordinating the University of Bristol branch of the Fossil Free Careers, as part of my role as the Campaigns coordinator with the Earth Justice Society at UoB. Within this, I have scheduled and chaired regular meetings, coordinated our sub-groups, co-created resources such as our open letter and social media posts, as well as helping to coordinate two actions as a team and develop campaign strategies. I could not have done this without a team of other dedicated students, and it has really highlighted the value the power of team work and collaboration within movements and fostering creativity and community.

Moreover, I have been on the committee for the Earth Justice Society at UoB for 2 years now, so I have a lot of experience in communication and event planning, including things like networking events, workshops, collaborations with other societies, and events focused on wellbeing. Wellbeing is something that I am very attentive to, especially within student climate groups and spaces, as burnout is very common. Due to this ongoing issue amongst many young climate campaigners, I helped to run a workshop focused on fostering a climate of care within the university, which explored how we can all strive to look out for one another and our unique and diverse needs, build a greater sense of community, and strengthen our relationship with each other and our environment. I hope that this shows that I have the necessary skills not only to coordinate meetings, events, and work on behind-the-scenes aspects of campaigning, but also that I am very conscious of working within our means as student groups, which is essential to the sustainability of climate justice movements.

How do your values align with those of People & Planet?

I strongly believe that grassroots activism, especially when youth-driven, is fundamental in the strive for climate justice, given its ability to be more flexible, nuanced, adaptable and creative, which are things which are all lacking within top-down efforts to achieving sustainability. This is a value I really share with People and Planet.

Moreover, I really value People and Planet’s focus on climate justice and solidarity, which are also aspects that are missing within more normative, market-driven, institutional understandings of sustainability which have ultimately proved ineffective and superficial.

By empowering student voice, I believe that people and planet, as well as other incredible student climate justice campaigners, can build momentum and change collectively and in ways which can enrich our understandings of sustainability and justice. By pinpointing the shortfalls of our institutions, including our universities, they can be held accountable for their contradictory actions which do not align with student demands or sustainability goals, and greater standards can be developed.

Building student power and voice is very important to me, as it has a multitude of benefits, including building communities, personal confidence, solidarity, and the ability to be critical of institutions and universities so that we can demand better.

Follow Trixie's campaign:

Instagram: @earthjustice.uob