A COMMUNITY AT WORK The Partner Shoeb Syed, UWCSEA Site Manager, Sodexo UWCSEA’s partnership with Sodexo is yielding many opportunities for developing campus environmental projects, much of this due to the enthusiastic engagement of our Site Manager Shoeb. Two of the College’s biggest stewardship success stories, Vegetarian Wednesdays and kitchen waste composting have been the result of Shoeb’s work with Student Councils and Environmental groups. More recent initiatives have included partnering with the Junior School on both campuses for Sodexo’s global Wasteless Week, offering discounts on drinks as part of the Bring-Your-Own (BYO) Mug initiative and working with our gardening groups to use campus-grown fresh herbs in the canteen. Sodexo are consistently recognised in global sustainability indexes for their commitment to environmental stewardship. The sustainability of food systems is a huge global challenge, especially in land-poor Singapore, but Shoeb and his dedicated team are proving valuable partners in putting our shared vision into practice at UWCSEA.
The Supporters Andy and Mei Budden, supporters of UWCSEA Foundation Andy, a Trustee of the UWCSEA Foundation and his wife Mei, are long–standing supporters of environmental stewardship at the College. They initially established the Budden Environmental Initiative in 2012 to help finance student–led projects such as composting on Dover Campus and have recently expanded their support to fund the appointment of five teachers as Environmental Stewardship Coordinators over both campuses. Andy and Mei’s vision is that practical engagement with environmental issues should be part of every child’s education at UWCSEA. With this generous gift, their vision is now being implemented as the teacher coordinators have dedicated time to support the expansion of projects through the school.
The Activist Samay Bansal, student leader, Dover Campus For as long as anyone can remember, Samay’s has been the voice of the environmental movement at Dover Campus. After 14 years at Dover Campus, Samay will graduate in a few months, but he can be confident that his years of campaigning have made a lasting difference to attitudes and behaviours at school. Samay is an ideal activist: outspoken and committed, he nevertheless frames his campaigns around positive action and uses a healthy dose of humour to engage students and staff. And these are not the popular or more glamorous environmental campaigns such as saving endangered species; Samay has been tackling our own bad habits around eating and waste. Even as mock exams loomed this year, Samay was marshalling the VIP line he designed for the BYO Mug scheme. Samay’s ideas come a mile a minute, but the success of this and his other campaigns (which have included No Drive Day) has rested on the fact that his actions have spoken just as loudly as his words. 19