oikos Newsletter
April '15

be informed - get involved - make a difference

Dear Reader,
During the month of March, while it was discovered that agricultural waste can be turned into biofuel and toilets can generate electricity, oikees from 25 countries were also enlightened by discussions on finance and sustainability at the Spring Meeting. During the conference, the oikos community elected new Executive Board Members and shortly after the gathering in London, COMMIT met GRLI and launched a new video exposing their commitments. Likewise, the FutureLab 2014 video was published on our Youtube channel.
Read on to know more  what our outgoing Executive Board Member, Hubert, has to say about his experience in oikos. On a final note, do not forget: the Asia Meet is just days away!
Happy reading!

---

 The FutureLab 2014 Video is out!
Out of the cooperation between Robert Stürmer and the FutureLab 2014 Organising Team, the video of the FutureLab 2014 was created and published a few weeks ago. Click 'read more' to see the video. We hope you enjoy it!



oikos Asia Meet 2015: Sustainable Solutions to Urbanization

Urbanization is on the rise especailly in emerging countries like India, where around 300 million people live in towns and cities. 
This year's Asia Meet, hosted by oikos New Delhi, aims at tackling the issue of urbanization as it has become indispensable to think about its risks and come up with solutions for more sustainability in urbanization. 
oikos members from all over the world will gather from the 16th until the 19th of April, 2015. 




The Spring Meeting 2015 as it Happened
More than 120 young people from 25 countries met from March 26th to 29th in London for the oikos Spring Meeting 2015. The succesful event shed light on the challenges, opportunities and different perspectives in finance and sustainability. Here is the story. 



First Legislative Meeting of 2015  
Prior to the Spring Meeting 2015, the oikos Legislative Meeting took place in London. Three candidates applied for oikos Executive Board positions and the oikos President re-applied for her position. Click 'read more' to see the results of the elections.



Join and share an oikos Learning Circle!
  

Interested in finance, management education, economics, the EcoMap, entrepreneurship, supply chain/fashion or energy? Then join the Learning Circle on topic of your interest. Make most of the opportunity to gain experience, knowledge and establish networks! If you wish to initiate a Learning Circle with an alternative topic, do not hesitate to contact us.

Help us Understand oikos 

To better understand the needs and thoughts of the our community towards oikos, the Executive Board wishes to ask you some questions. Click 'read more' to see the short survey and please spread it in your chapters. The answers given to these questions will consequently be assessed and presented to the community as soon as they will be ready. Thank you for your collaboration! 

 

oikos Alumni

---

Get involved!

Being actively part of the oikos alumni network offers plenty of opportunities! Check the oikos Alumni Kit  for learning how to get involved. We are looking forward to hearing from you!

 



Your feedback, ideas and suggestions

We have prepared a survey to gather your feedback and collect ideas and suggestions on how to serve you better in the future. Your ideas, remarks and questions are very important to us, so please take a few minutes to answer our questions. Click on the following link to start the survey.

 LinkedIn for Alumni
Are you an alumna/alumnus? Keep in touch via Linkedin.
 


 

oikos Academic

---

oikos COMMIT meets GRLI

On March 29th, members of our management education initiative, COMMIT, met GRLI for a workshop to advance their project. The result was exciting! 


oikos Finance Academy - Check the participants
With just a few weeks to go to the oikos PRI Young Scholars Finance Academy in collaboration with the Henley Centre for Governance, Accountability and Responsible Investment, the participants' profiles are out. Check them out. 

30 seconds with...

---

Hubert Pylinski, oikos Executive Board Member 2014/2015

Dear oikees!

My name is Hubert Pyliński and I have been an oikos Executive Board Member for last year. Since my story in oikos in coming to an end I would like to throw some light on how it started and how oikos influenced my life.
As far as I remembered, it all started in the beginning of 2012 while attending a friend's birthday party. One oikee was sharing her very positive experience from the first oikos FutureLab. That's when I decided that I had to join oikos. And after six months of being a part of exchange semester I joined oikos. After attending the first meeting of oikos Warsaw I could feel how inclusive this organization is. Six days after joining oikos I was already helping in organizing a guest lecture of Dutch Princess Laurentien, who visited Warsaw and met with students to talk about Corporate Social Responsibility. Around the same time I also joined the team “Energysavers”, which was the first project related to Energy in which I participated. Soon sustainable energy became the main topic I was dealing with during my entire activity in oikos e.g. by preparing a paper for conference “European Energy and Climate Policy”, co-organizing CEE Meeting “Sustainable Energy for Europe” or lastly co-managing Energy Learning Circle.

A moment that strongly changed my view on our organization, was the oikos Spring Meeting 2o13 in Maastricht, which was the first international event that I attended. I was amazed by atmosphere there and the fact that young people from around the world, although so different, can believe in the same values and follow the same goal. This gave me motivation to join the organizing team of CEE Regional Meeting in Warsaw. One of my tasks was to get all participants from the hostel to the university on time and my inspiration was Anita Negri who was extremely successful in executing similar task few months before in Maastricht.
After participating in two international meetings and having a unique possibility to work with few oikos EBs in my chapter I started thinking about getting more involved in oikos International. My involvement started in Copenhagen where Legislative Meeting accepted my candidature as a new EB member. My personal highlight of the year being in the EB, was a 3 month-long internship that I did in the oikos office in St. Gallen, where I could fully focus on working for the organization and witness all the processes happening there, which allowed me to truly understand how oikos works.
All this wouldn’t be possible without all the great oikos people, who really empower others. My story shows that being motivated and passionate about what you’re doing was enough to successfully serve at a high position in an international organization. I think that quite often to change many things all that is needed is someone’s willingness to do it. During this time in oikos I learned a lot about the challenges our world faces and developed many skills, which may be useful in the future to fight those challenges.

I believe that oikos creates future leaders who will drive the change towards sustainability and, therefore, I would like to ask you, dear reader, to get more involved in oikos. You don’t need to be extraordinary. You just need the want to do it. Do you want it?

With best regards,
Hubert Pyliński

See what the oikos Executive Board is up to here.