Aalto University Welcomes Local Organisations As Project Partners
Five organisations from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area’s public and private sector are joining the Erasmus+ Urban Goodcamp project, which aims to tackle pressing urban challenges through multidisciplinary programmes for students, researchers, and life-long learners. The companies will join the project as active partners who will provide challenges and mentorships for students to work on in the upcoming 5-day Bootcamp to be held January 16-20th, 2023.
The challenges provided by the partner organisations span across Urban GoodCamp’s main themes: Waste Management, Energy Solutions, and Circular Economy, with a specific focus on Sustainable Urban Development and Food Management.
The challenges will engage participants in multidisciplinary work, mixing together students with a variety of different backgrounds; from engineering, business, art and architecture. Students working together on these challenges are expected to develop their teamworking skills, in order to work in a real-life environment.
The organisations
City of Helsinki
Initiated in 2021, the City of Helsinki’s Cluster Program for Circular Economy promotes circular economy innovations and businesses, while helping the City further its climate goals. Different city divisions, companies, research institutes, universities and other organizations interested in promoting circular economy with concrete actions and experiments are involved in the various activities of the Circular Economy Cluster. At the moment, the Circular Economy Cluster focuses especially on improving circularity in the construction industry. One of the goals is to also support the development of new materials and digital solutions as well as new businesses based on circular economy.
Ramboll
Founded in Denmark in 1945, Ramboll is a global design and consulting company for sustainable cities and societies. They offer innovative and sustainable solutions in the Design, Construction and Maintenance of Infrastructure, Transport, Buildings and the Environment, as well as Architecture & Landscape. Ramboll combines local experience with a global knowledge base to create sustainable cities and societies.
SPIN Unit
SPIN Unit is a research and innovation studio dedicated to fostering equitable urban transformation, combining citizen science with data analysis to draft policy blueprints. Current academic projects look at the challenges posed by urban and climate change on human health. Through their work, SPIN aims to bridge the gap between academic research and the planning practice through challenge-based learning processes; explore cities through contemporary media to unearth non-commodified values by championing the commons in transforming environments; map relations between the visible and the intangible forms of the city through cultural analytics and collective experiences.
YIT
YIT is the largest Finnish and a significant North European development and construction company. For 110 years, they have been creating better living environments – functional homes for sustainable living, future-proof public and commercial buildings, and infrastructure for smoother flow of people, businesses and society.
YIT employs 5,500 professionals in nine countries: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.
ResQ Club
Food waste is a huge, yet unnecessary, global problem. ResQ provides a marketplace where restaurants, cafés and grocery stores can sell their surplus food with a discount instead of throwing it away. People using the ResQ app, on the other hand, can discover new venues while enjoying affordable prices and helping the environment.
ResQ Club was founded in Helsinki, Finland, in 2015 to tackle the food waste problem. Operating in four countries, so far ResQ has helped save 9 million portions of food from going to waste.