SHEPO
Students' Health and Environmental Protection Organization
A movement is always more powerful when people join forces. Numerous environmental groups exist in China, but each operates separately. I saw the potential power in these groups working together to exchange ideas and prevent same mistakes from occurring. By uniting, we’re able to promote far-reaching innovation and ground-breaking thought with high impact.
Therefore, I founded the Students’ Health and Environmental Protect Organization (SHEPO), an online platform for environmentalists – students, companies and public – to organize annual conferences, exhibitions and mentoring programs. With over thirty branches across the world and over 2,000 members, we try to connect as many environmentalists as possible and to demonstrate the importance of sustainability to companies and NGOs.
What is SHEPO and how did it start?
What did we do?
1. Students Act Conference.
A conference for the high school environmental groups to come together to learn from each other, meet established environmental NGOs and establish cooperation. We organized two annual conferences. Each time we had about 30 student groups and 5-10 companies and NGOs attending.
2. Scientific research on environmentally friendly method for organism disposal
The core team members in SHEPO conducted an academic scientific research project pertaining eco-friendly methods of organism disposal. We created a model for organism disposal using carbonization to mitigate air pollution caused by cremation exhaust gas, and presented the proposal to a Deputy to People's Congress in China. We also won First Prize in China Thinks Big competition 2017 held by Harvard University.
What did SHEPO teach me?
SHEPO gave me extensive experience in communication, organizing events, networking and coordinating with partners. It also made me realize how much I love serving as the connection point of a community and meeting new people: talking to the head of Greenpeace Germany made me reflect on all unintended consequences of sustainability activism, and I learnt so much about the intersection of arts and science from a 12-year-old who makes artistic bookmarks out of fallen leaves to promote sustainability. I love building platforms and learning from people, and I would love to continue doing that.