Young people will discover job opportunities in a growing low carbon economy at the ‘Your Green Future’ event next month, with help from the Royal Agricultural University.

The University will attend the cutting-edge green event in Stroud, Gloucestershire, on Tuesday 4 and Wednesday 5 February, and offer expert advice on developing a low carbon, sustainable future to over 400 school students from across the area. It has sponsored Your Business Future, a food sustainability workshop, and is supplying several Student Ambassadors on each day to help deliver the workshops.

During the event, students will engage their creative side to develop a food item of today into a product fit for 2025, work with a number of enterprising businesses, and determine how to improve the sustainability of a settlement’s energy use.

The event will also include a Dragons’ Den-style workshop where students will invest in innovative new technology, such as Jaguar Land Rover’s liquid fuel solutions for vehicles and Airbus’s Sharklets wingtip devices, which offer fuel burn savings.

Students will have the opportunity to visit the exhibitor hall and seek advice from educational institutions such as the Royal Agricultural University, the National Apprenticeships Service, and the University of Gloucestershire on the wide range of job opportunities available, including the skills needed and the pathways into work.

Joy-Amy Wigman, Widening Participation and Outreach Officer at the Royal Agricultural University, said: ‘We are supporting this event because sustainability runs through everything that we do at the University, and everything our courses are about. We believe in educating young people about how important it is to build a better future and they are part of that.

‘The Your Green Future project shows how sustainability fits in to everyday life and the choices that young people make about their future careers. We’re proud to be a part of it and to get involved with the community!’

The Royal Agricultural University is committed to conducting its activities with due consideration for the environment, and teaches its students to do the same. The campus has incorporated cutting-edge technology to dramatically reduce the University’s carbon footprint, including the installation of a ‘carbon neutral’ biomass heating system, the use of rain harvesting and low energy lighting, and an air source heat pump which extracts heat from outside.

The University encourages staff and students to sign up for the RAU car-share scheme and save money and carbon emissions, and is participating in Climate Week 2014 with themed events for each day. Students can get involved in everything from inter-halls energy challenges and bike polo to charity shop swaps, and a Climate Change pub quiz to raise awareness about transport, waste and recycling, energy, biodiversity and sustainable food production i.e. Fairtrade.

Your Green Future has been running for three years and has already successfully taken place at a number of venues across the South West and Midlands. The event is an initiative by local charity, Severn Wye Energy Agency, working in partnership with Stroud District Council, local universities, Rotary, InterClimate Network and STEMnet. Sponsors include Stroud District Council, Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Summerfield Trust, Royal Agricultural University and Rotary.

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For more information please contact shelly.hampshire@rau.ac.uk on 01285 652531.