As Sustainability Education Lead at South East Technological University (SETU), I work to embed sustainability across teaching, learning, and institutional practice. Learner success depends on students being actively engaged in shaping the decisions that impact their futures. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is, to me, about developing transformative skills that empower young people to act with agency as leaders of change.
Guided by the EU GreenComp Framework and UNESCO’s key sustainability competences, my work integrates technical expertise with competency-based learning - systems thinking, collaboration, critical reflection, and future-oriented leadership. This enables students to build the knowledge, skills, and values required to navigate complex challenges while adopting a sustainability-focused, globally informed perspective across their disciplines, careers, and lives.
To support this, I advance Living Labs underpinned by Design Thinking as mechanisms within a whole-institute approach to ESD. These collaborative spaces connect students, staff, and partners in co-creating solutions to real-world challenges, generating tangible impact for communities and regions. By linking higher education to the opportunities of the regional green transition, my focus is on championing youth as leaders of sustainable transformation - embedding creativity, ethical responsibility, and action at the heart of education for sustainability.
