Earlier this year, the University of Greenwich announced a student crowdfunding campaign for Bee Sustainable, a project that aims to change the lives of bees who are crucial to our planet and help the next generation with understanding the importance bees have on our population.
After incredible generosity from Greenwich alumni and other supporters, they have gone on to raise an amazing £582! The donations will allow the students to create a second garden and a suite of educational resources for children to learn about preserving the declining wild bee populations in London.
Bee Sustainable now have even bigger plans for the future – and this is all thanks to our community of supporters. In the next five years, they aim to:
- Create at least five bee gardens, impacting over 700,000 bees and reducing over 200kg of CO2 each year.
- Partner with at least 10 institutions and create digital materials for children and adults.
- Continue to produce and develop their candles, as well as create bee-saving kits.
Importantly, the Bee Sustainable project has provided valuable opportunities for our students to develop key entrepreneurial and employability skills. By engaging in hands-on volunteering, they've gained experience in project management, stakeholder engagement, marketing, and sustainability initiatives – all of which are highly sought after by employers.
Bee Sustainable’s project leader, Karolina Dzielak, has sent a personal message thanking supporters:
I would like to thank all donors from the bottom of my heart. But our journey doesn’t end with this crowdfunding campaign! We have big plans and even bigger ambitions to help as many bees as we can. Follow us to stay up to date on what we do and see how you can help the bees.
Your donations will allow us to create a second garden and educational resources for children. Our team and Bee Sustainable will be able to grow and create more impact. And this is all thanks to you – thank you for helping our bee friends!
You’ll also be glad to know that with your support, we’ve conducted our first class in the garden, teaching kids bee whispering, and how and what to plant for bees. And we finished the session by giving them their own bee-friendly seeds. We’ve also developed our first garden which provided habitats for 3,200 bees, and will support more than 7,000 bees overall, reducing over 45kg of CO2 per year!
The campaign would not have been possible without the amazing team working behind the scenes – thank you to Minh Lam, Sophie Hassell-Richardson and the rest of the Alumni and Fundraising team. Working with you was a pleasure and we could not have done this without you.
The whole experience allowed us to improve our project, not only through donations but through the team we worked with and the donors. We could not have been more grateful for everyone’s support.
Follow us on Instagram @beesustainable2021, LinkedIn Bee Sustainable Project, or Facebook Bee Sustainable.
Do you want to support students all year round?
Crowdfunding at Greenwich helps to provide crucial funding for initiatives like Bee Sustainable, enabling our students to develop valuable entrepreneurial and employability skills through hands-on volunteering opportunities.
If there is no live crowdfunding campaign, donate to the Annual Fund and you can help bridge the gap between education and employment, empowering our students to thrive in their future careers or as entrepreneurs.
If you have any questions regarding your donations, please email the Alumni and Fundraising team at alumni@gre.ac.uk. Find out more.
To keep up to date with projects, please follow us on Twitter @GreenwichAlumni, Instagram @GreenwichAlumni and Facebook.
