Reflecting on SSO and SSO+ at the University of Cyprus
Article by Christina Lambrou (Dormitory Coordinator, University of Cyprus, Cyprus)
With the academic year coming to an end, it’s time to reflect on our Student Switch Off (SSO) and Student Switch Off+ (SSO+) campaigns at the University of Cyprus. We are pleased that most of our students and ambassadors were happy to get involved and it seems that they were inspired to save energy.
Looking back at the year, we were pretty busy; we were present at all newcomers’ orientation events to ensure that as many students as possible heard about the campaigns, we organized fun photo competitions for both SSO and SSO+, we launched three online climate quizzes, and had fun at our ambassadors training party event, where 18 students were trained as ambassadors.
We also organized two energy training sessions for students living in rented accommodation, (one of the sessions was done in collaboration with Cyprus’ Environmental Commissioner), and our emails regarding energy savings advice were regularly sent and posted on social media. We were very excited to take part in Earth Hour on the 30th of March 2019; we turned off the lights in all the halls of residence for the hour, encouraging students to take part. In we were also happy to attend the Green Festival organized by the Environmental Student Club UCY in April, where we presented SSO and SSO+.
This month, we had a lot of fun celebrating the hall that won the SSO campaign at the University of Cyprus. The event took place on the 22nd of May; the winners, as well as our ambassadors, received their rewards and certificates, while having some pizza and sweets, courtesy of the university.
Finally, we are reaching to other universities in Cyprus – since the beginning of the academic year we have been working with the Technological University of Cyprus on the SSO+ campaign; they have started their own engagement and awareness raising activities on energy efficiency.
We are looking forward to meeting all the other universities/ students’ unions running SSO and SSO+ across Europe as part of the SAVES 2 project (Bulgaria, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Romania and the UK), to exchange ideas and be inspired to run the campaigns again at the University of Cyprus in 2019/20.
