Partners
Spark a conversation about sustainability in your organisation by offering placements to skilled and committed Masters students
The Bulmer Foundation’s Masters in Sustainable Development Advocacy is a unique programme that aims to shift individuals, organisations, and businesses onto a more sustainable footing. It’s not a traditional Masters, and the emphasis is on real, ‘live’, work-based learning. Not only are our students intelligent and motivated, they are also personally committed to sustainability. They can bring their knowledge, skills and expertise to your organisation, as well as a passion that can break down boundaries.
Each student undertakes four one-month placements, as well as working on a team task and working on a self-directed dissertation project. For all of these elements, we work with regional and national organisations of all types and sizes to offer opportunities which benefit both student and host. The students are a unique resource that you can apply to projects which you or your colleagues might not otherwise have time for. They can bring fresh thinking and fresh ideas as a result of their exposure during other placements and Masterclasses. Several of our past students have gone on to work for their host organisations.
By placing students within your organisation, you will become a part of our network of people and organisations working for sustainability in the region, and nationally. This network will be a source of ideas and opportunities in the future, a means by which you can keep connected up with the sustainability debate.
Please get in touch if you are interested in offering a work placement.
“As a climate change social enterprise we have enjoyed a unique relationship with the Bulmer Foundation’s SDA Programme since its inception. As well as providing some input to the course we have had a real partnership with each cohort, have hosted three placement students, and recruited three graduates as full-time project managers. The course seems to unleash a passion and spirit which we can put to great use in creating the climate for change at Marches Energy Agency. But more than this the students seem to have an ability to unite and change for the better the people and organisations that they meet along the way.”
Richard Davies, Director, Marches Energy Agency
Hosting a student placement
Students undertake four one-month placements as individuals, and one team task in small groups. The individual placements follow four sectors, or themes:
Policy and advice |
Business |
Campaigning and media |
Community |
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2010-11 |
8th Nov- |
10th Jan- |
21 Feb- |
20th June- |
Students work on specific, ‘live’ projects agreed with the host organisation. Activities could involve writing and presenting a paper, working on a biodiversity action plan, organising and holding a community meeting, writing articles or briefings, drafting an environmental policy statement, surveying stakeholders’ views, shadowing senior staff, and working on a funding proposal. Students will also be expected to achieve their personal and wider programme learning outcomes.
Placement hosts will be responsible for monitoring the placement, offering supervision, and helping to grade the student’s performance at the end of the placement.
Case studies
1. Dissertation project – Hay Festival
What was the aim of the project?
To undertake half of a feasibility study for one of Hay's 'Greenprint' projects, which aims to foster cooperation between festivals in Wales to make their supply chains more sustainable.
The student – Rachael Durrant (SDAP 2007-08)
My project involved contacting festival organisers and development agencies in Wales, conducting interviews and trialling a sustainability auditing questionnaire to measure what interest there was in the initiative, and also to identify potential opportunities and threats to it. I then analysed all the information and made recommendations to the Festival about how to make the initiative work.
The project was a great learning experience in terms of becoming more aware of my skills and needs. Because I was generating all my own deadlines and task lists, working from home, and juggling other responsibilities at the same time, I got a real sense of the 'fine balance' required for me to live a demanding and productive life without losing my cool. I also got some paid work from Hay during the festival, which was thrilling work and offered great networking opportunities, which I am currently pursuing further.
The mix of experiential and theoretical learning was a very attractive element of the course. One cannot replace the other as both have different things to offer and reinforce each other. However, I don't think you can truly say that you have learned about a process until you have been responsible for carrying it out and have personally experienced the shortcomings as well as the breakthroughs of your approach. I came on this course explicitly because I felt that it was time for me to learn through doing, rather than through reading, thinking, writing and arguing as I had done during my undergraduate studies.
Andy Fryers, Hay Festival
It was great for us to have a student from the SDA programme working with us for her project element of the programme. Masters students opt into education following their degree and thus have that element of keenness and the willingness to make things work. The combination of practical and theoretical experience that students from the SDA programme come with is very valuable. The more exposure to different employers, the better, and at the Hay Festival, we tend to employ people who have done work for us previously, such as volunteering or being an intern, so placements offer a great chance to get work after the course.
2. Placement – National Association of Cider Makers (NACM)
Placement aim
To ascertain the carbon equivalent of CO2 produced by the UK cider industry during the manufacturing process and first-phase distribution.
Gabe Cook (SDAP 2007-08)
Throughout my placement I was out and about meeting NACM members as well as smaller producers affiliated to the organisation. With a questionnaire I had developed, I visited all these producers to gather data, which was then converted into carbon equivalents. This gave a preliminary figure for CO2 output by the manufacturing process of the UK cider industry, which the industry will use as a benchmark to work off in an attempt to reduce its CO2 output. It was tough work as the placement occurred in the autumn – the busiest time of the cider year due to the harvest!
This placement was a great introduction to the real world of work, and especially to real-life sustainability in action. To see your research being utilised and acted upon is a very fulfilling thing and the contacts made during the research have proved invaluable in generating further work. And, given that cider is my passion, the opportunity to meet the nine biggest cider makers in the country was fantastic on both a personal and professional level. I also got to attend the All Parliamentary Cider Group meeting at the House of Commons. I never would have imagined that I would schmooze with the great and the good of the cider industry whilst eating expensive canapés and free cider on the terrace of the House of Commons overlooking the River Thames.
Despite gaining a first class undergraduate degree in Geography, when first I applied for jobs, I was constantly rejected on the basis of having no prior experience. I was caught in a vicious circle leading to disillusionment and a period of time whereby I did not know how I was going to gain the type of job I wanted. When I was told about told about the course and its experiential nature, it immediately appealed as it offered an opportunity to gain the real-world experience I so badly needed and wanted.
I can say now that after undertaking this pioneering carbon footprint assessment, as well as the significant number of other real-life projects, not only do I have the experience so craved by employers but I have been armed with the necessary skills to be effective in the workplace and have the confidence and conviction to be a true advocate.
Richard Heathcote, Scottish & Newcastle
Sustainability is increasingly important to Scottish & Newcastle, and the two biggest areas for us are responsible alcohol consumption and the need to manage energy and water effectively (water is our biggest raw material, constituting 95% of our product). The sustainable development agenda is primarily about change, and in business this means a change of mindset from the conventional wisdom that has emerged since the seventies and post-Thatcher era, to an emerging way of doing business for which there is no real model as yet. So this is a technically and emotionally difficult transition – how to still make a profit AND move towards sustainability. It is also a frightening one, which folks might not embark on through fear and lack of knowledge. This is an area of long and hard debate that is just beginning. Having 'advocates' for sustainable development is critical to facilitate and lead some of these discussions.
Placement hosts
Some of the organisations that have hosted placements include: