On Saturday more than 30 students from People & Planet groups all across the country came together to decide our next climate campaign. We're thrilled to announce the End Extractivist Ties proposal was chosen from a really strong field.

Our biggest achievement this year was at Leeds University Union’s May Forum, where we put forward a motion asking the union to lobby the University of Leeds to cut ties with Barclays until it stops funding the climate breakdown. Having achieved a huge victory at the start of the academic year, with the University divesting £3.6 million of its shares in Shell, BP and Total, we wanted to keep up the momentum and pressure the University to examine its secondary links to the fossil fuel industry. 

Earlier this month the Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium (SUPC) co-signed an open letter with Electronics Watch (EW) clarifying the nature of SUPCS’ affiliation. Electronics Watch is a worker-driven monitoring organisation which audits supply chains within the global electronics industry, an industry which has been identified as high risk for modern slavery as well as a raft of other workers rights abuses.

Before the Sweatshop Free campaign, admittedly, I had never considered the possibility that the electronics that universities purchase could be made in sweatshops, which shows my own ignorance on such an intricate issue. At University of East Anglia (UEA), I chose a module titled ‘Activist Campaigning’ as it wasn’t a typical essay-based module about political theorists; it was going to be practical and engaging and I was grateful to have it offered to me.