Green Impact Students’ Unions

Green Impact Students’ Unions (GISU) is our flagship sustainability support package and awards programme for the student movement. It’s designed to help unions run effective projects and campaigns, using our power as the student movement to create lasting change. Find out more on the Green Impact Students’ Unions web page.

Although it’s called ‘Green Impact’ it’s not just about planting trees or getting your recycling in order. Many Green Impact students’ unions use the framework to build impactful projects and campaigns around climate justice and equality, curriculum reform, health and wellbeing and much more. Joining GISU means joining our network. We provide opportunities to partner with other unions, hold networking events and share good practice through resources and case studies. Our vision is that students graduate from further and higher education equipped to deal with the global challenges we face, and we believe students’ unions play a key role in helping students gain the skills, knowledge and experience needed to make this happen. We created the Green Impact toolkit as a framework for union staff, officers and students to collaboratively address key issues to lead on embedding sustainability and social justice across campus, the curriculum, and wider society.

Green Impact Students’ Unions (GISU) works on an annual cycle. Launching each autumn, unions try to implement change throughout the academic year, submitting work in spring, receiving an audit in early summer, then awards are announced in June.

Each participating union will be given access to the online toolkit which houses all the actions we’d like SUs to work on through for the year.

Over the months you will be making progress on campus and within your students’ union, setting up, embedding and delivering campaigns and initiatives. There are a number of ways you can receive support over this period:

• Resource bank – we have an online resource bank accessible to all GISU participants, to guide, inspire and support them throughout the year. This will house guidance documents, templates, case studies and webinar recordings. If you are a union that does not partake in GISU, you can email us to request a specific resource.
• Webinars – We deliver webinars to welcome & introduce you to the programme, to help keep you on track and we coordinate webinars on a range of themes to facilitate idea sharing and inspire action.
• Peer to Peer – We have a great network of sustainability contacts, help partner SUs and support or facilitate online forum calls. There are various online platforms to join in discussions, share ideas or ask questions.
• Phone calls, mid-way – In January or February, we will offer calls for all participating SUs to check-in with your progress, offer support and to gather your feedback.
• Ad hoc support – If you have queries at any point throughout the year, or would like to suggest an idea for a future webinar, case study or news piece, please get in touch by emailing us. We often share examples of best practice with SUs when they get in contact with questions.
• Learning and development opportunities – 10% reduction in price to some SOS UK’s Learning Academy offerings. Offerings particularly relevant for SUs include Course reps & sustainability training and Campaign planning workshops