To me, there are three pathways which a student can take within their lives. The first pathway is that they can ignore the world issues which we’re currently facing. Secondly, you can choose to acknowledge these issues but not do anything about it. Thirdly, you can recognise these issues are happening and you can be the change that you want to be. This is what a Global Sustainable Development (GSD) student represents. They notice these world issues and they want to make a change within our society.

One of my greatest passions is tackling food insecurity throughout the world. Millions of people are still going hungry every day, and this is one of the biggest problems which our society is facing at the moment. GSD’s all about studying these problems in great detail and working to develop solutions from this, and so I’ve received a lot of support from the GSD community in starting up a social enterprise called Food Intercept.

We’re collecting edible fruit and vegetable waste from Coventry Food Market, we’re taking this fruit and vegetable waste to Mum’s Kitchen, a kitchen in Coventry which employs single minority women and provides financial and social support to them. Mum’s Kitchen is turning this edible food waste into meals which we’re now selling within the GSD common room. Using the profits which we make from these sales, we’ve been able to provide financial and social support to the single minority women within Coventry. Therefore, we’ve been able to make a sustainable impact within our community and use the lessons which I’ve learned from GSD to help solve problems in the local area.

It’s making these small changes within our society that are going to incrementally build up and make the big changes which we need in order to achieve global sustainable development.

I’m Luke, I’m a GSD student at Warwick.