Greennovate and AIESEC Take GECKO to the Next Level

AIESEC members in the Greennovate office

With the impending start of the summer semester at Chinese universities, Greennovate and AIESEC are planning a dramatic expansion of their sustainability education programs.

AIESEC is the world’s largest student-run organization. Active in over 1700 universities across more than 107 countries and territories, it is an international platform for youth leadership development. AIESECers strive to be agents of change and have a positive impact on society, with climate change and sustainability issues as significant parts of the organisation’s agenda.

As such, Greennovate’s GECKO project is a perfect match for AIESECers: On the one hand, Greennovate has been making an effort to integrate and train university students in order to expand GECKO; on the other, AIESEC members from around the world are looking for exciting international internships. China’s rapid growth has many students interested in experiencing the country first-hand. However, there are few opportunities and difficulties to interact with Chinese people in a suitable environment.

Participation in the GECKO program gives AIESECers who are considering coming to China a supportive and professional environment. Conversely, GECKO profits from a huge pool of bright university students who are passionate about sustainability. The natural fit between GECKO and AIESEC became apparent when the first AIESEC volunteers took part in Greennovate’s ‘Train the Trainer’ program in October last year. Since then, more AIESECers from Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Canada have worked as green ambassadors for GECKO.

What began as a fruitful collaboration has since evolved into a formal partnership.
With an AIESEC coordinator being deployed at the Greennovate office, the project is about to grow on a big scale. AIESEC members worldwide are now able to come to China for GECKO within theAIESEC internship framework. A greater influx of international volunteers will help enable GECKO to reach its goal of empowering 50,000 Chinese high school students in 2010. AIESEC chapters in universities all over China are expected to join in running the project.

- Thomas Bley