Five students at the University of Northern British Columbia have been honoured for their social and environmental initiatives at an award ceremony for the Project Change competition in Vancouver. This was the first year of the province-wide competition and students in post-secondary tourism programs were asked to create and develop an effective social or environmental stewardship project for their community. In all, UNBC students took home awards in three of the contest’s nine categories.

Dawn Hansen, Natasha Wilbrink, and Thomas Baumann received the “Best Conservation Prize” and its $2000 award for their project, “UNBC Waste Management Audit”; Carmen Marer and former UNBC student Yvette Ekman took home the Best in Region Award and the Community Development Award for their “Winter Coat and Lunch at St. Vincent de Paul” project; and Jody Phibbs and former student Stephanie Tandy received the Community Development Award for their entry, “Community Connect.”

“For the waste audit, we gathered 79 volunteers living in UNBC’s student residences and collected and analyzed their garbage, separating it into waste, recyclable, and compostable items,” says Hansen, a third-year Outdoor Recreation and Tourism Management (ORTM) student from Whitehorse, YK. “Nearly half of it was compostable; very little was actually waste.” The group later presented their findings to the Prince George Public Interest Research Group.

The “Winter Coat and Lunch at St. Vincent de Paul” project encouraged volunteerism among the UNBC students and youth of Prince George. Group members put on a winter jacket drive on UNBC’s Prince George campus and collected more than 40 coats for the homeless. They also hosted a hot dog lunch at St Vincent de Paul, which gathered donation money for the Society. “We learned how many homeless people there are in Prince George, and what they need,” says Marer, who hails from Maple Ridge. “I think more students need to volunteer. Many are willing to donate money, but they often aren’t willing to donate their time.”

“Community Connect” focused on methods of community improvement through acts of kindness. Participants hung posters with suggestions for positive actions they can carry out around campus and throughout the broader community. They also created a Facebook page where participants were encouraged to post their act of kindness (whether they carried it out or were the recipient) on the page to inspire others to do the same. “We spread the word through the posters and connections on Facebook,” says Phibbs, who is from Boston Bar. “I learned how important networking and having the right connections is to affecting positive change.”

The students were introduced to the contest by ORTM professor Phil Mullins, who gave students in his ORTM 200 course the option of submitting to the course as part of the project component of the class. All but one group chose to participate.

The awards were held February 2nd, 2012 in Vancouver. Project Change was coordinated through LinkBC: the tourism education network and elicited submissions from seven universities and colleges across the province.

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Front L to R, Natasha Wilbrink, Jody Phibbs, Dawn Hansen, Carmen Marer. Back is Thomas Baumann.