The 1st PRME Talk: An Intimate Kick-Off Meeting with Student Representatives

On January 31, 2018, the PRME team organized the 1st PRME Talk involving student representatives, most prominently some of the SBM ITB ambassadors. The event was relatively intimate as it attempted to give an overview of some of the PRME-related initiatives or programs in 2017 and an encouragement of how student representatives could get involved. Such initiatives or programs are those that the PRME team initiated but they are also those that have been running within the school that simply are aligned with the PRME principles. In this way, PRME-related initiatives or programs are not meant to be exclusive, but inclusive. The PRME team simply acts as a catalyst that identifies initiatives or programs that have been running within the school and facilitates those others that may come up.

The 2-hour event was kicked off by a brief presentation about PRME itself and the involvements SBM ITB has in relation to the PRME principles. It was then followed up by a quick survey about universally defined values that student representatives thought were represented by SBM ITB and one survey on tumbler?s design. The first survey was an attempt to explore the extent to which SBM ITB has represented the values that would promote the PRME principles. The second survey was an attempt to understand the design that would best represent the preference of students if they were to buy a tumbler. The promotion of the use of tumbler is aligned with the initiative to reduce the use of plastic bottles for drinking.

Invited to join the event, one of the current students then presented briefly about her undergraduate thesis focusing on the management of waste and people?s behaviours associated with waste treatment. The presentation was very insightful as it highlighted one of the anti-mainstream final projects done by a student. It became a personal realization that was shared with the audience. Afterwards, we had quite an intensive discussion session about potential initiatives or programs that the student representatives had in mind.

We were practically juggling ideas on what to do next. But the emphasis was on what they would like to do themselves. An engagement is not to ask others to do what we want, but to do it ourselves.

Last but not least, the present student representatives had a chance to receive a PRME t-shirt as a simple way to promote PRME-related activities as we were producing and designing new t-shirts. Overall, the kick-off went pretty well. But challenges to make things happen are ahead of us?

Author: Andika Putra Pratama, PhD