The FAMU Green Coalition Holds Its General Body Meeting

Students taking interest in the green coalition

Florida A&M University Green Coalition hosted its first general body meeting Monday at “the bridge” in the Agriculture building.

The Green Coalition’s mission is to partner with campus, area and governmental resources to help protect and enhance the health and well being of the greater FAMU community on environmental issues.

The FAMU Green Coalition has two main purposes: education and service.  It was founded with an emphasis on learning how climate change affects us all and has evolved to take on broader sustainability concerns.  The club offers opportunities for service and a way for students in any major to get involved together in environmental projects.

Projects in planning stages for this year include maintaining GreenCo Park, recycling at the football and basketball games.

According to Kathryn Ziewitz, co-advisor for the FAMU Green Coalition,  it was founded with an emphasis upon learning how climate change affects us all, its second purpose is for service and a way for students in any major to get involved together in environmental projects.

“As president of the Green Coalition, I hope to make living ‘green’ and sustainability a realistic everyday practice to students and the campus as a whole. As an organization, we have many projects that we hope to complete this academic year; some of which include environmental education, and potentially a campus garden,” said Andrea Pugh, senior environmental science student from Saginaw, Mich.

The FAMU Green Coalition ended with a presentation from Kabuya Pamela Bowens-Saffo, arts project coordinator for the FAMU Sustainability Institute.

Bowens-Saffo spoke on the Art of Sustainability and how it is a campus wide competition, which enlightens the campus community as well as the surrounding community about sustainability.

She also spoke on the problems that we are approaching, in addition to giving students the opportunity to recognize what it means to recycle and how the use of different recycling materials can be new, innovative ideas of fine art.

“I think it’s very important for the university to recognize who we are as an institution and how we have lived, connected and respected our environment, “ said Bowens-Saffo. “The history and legacy of this institute is based on sustainability.”

The Green Coalition has made many contributions to the environment by distributing 7,000 free compact fluorescent lightbulbs from 2007-2009 as part of “Save a Light for Daylight Savings.” The Green Coalition has also built FAMU GreenCo Park, along with earning several awards and reaching out to educate others.

The club advisors are Architecture Professor Olivier Chamel and Ziewitz.

“Student power is pretty amazing. Its great to see students get together to do something… So if I can help organize so that we can work together on this campus, we can really make some good things happen,” said Ziewitz.

The Green Coalition will be participating in the campus-wide clean up on Oct. 10.