Warwick student Indy Sira has won the 2017 Green Gown Award for Leadership. The Award comes in recognition of her tireless and passionate work with her team to initiate and deliver various social projects where ‘sustainability’ has been the key focus.

From reducing food waste to trying to create more inclusive communities and broader opportunities, Indy and her team deserve recognition for all the hard work they’ve put in. These projects simply wouldn’t have happened had Indy not been the driving force behind them.

Indy had this to say:

“During my time at university, I had the opportunity to be part of Enactus Warwick, which provided me with the platform to create an employability programme for refugees and asylum seekers to leading the society, which included projects that were working towards combatting food waste within Coventry. It was an inspirational journey for me and I’m really grateful for receiving this award. In particular, I want to thank my university advisors for supporting me, throughout my role as team leader and each and every member that made my time at Enactus Warwick very special. Sustainability is at the heart of every project we initiated, in order to have a long-term impact on both the beneficiaries’ and the environment and it’s something that I truly believe in.”

Indy was also heavily involved in Project Baala, which made the finals this year. 88% menstruating women in India do not use any sanitary products during their period and use alternatives such as pieces of rag, ash, sand and husk. That’s a situation that Project Baala, which involves our students, aims to bring an end to through a combination of awareness raising and distributing sustainable, re-usable sanitary products in India.

Our 2017 Go Green Week, aimed to make Coventry and the University cleaner, greener and healthier for everyone, made it to the finals as well. It included events on both campuses and in Coventry itself, with everything from a sustainable fashion show and careers fair to academic talks and a pub quiz. It will return in March 2018.