“A once in a lifetime opportunity”: Kilkenny students travel to Germany to learn about sustainable cities

The next generation of urban planners could be right on our doorstep as three local students took part in a unique summer camp last month.

Rose V. Antony, Rory O’Reilly and Susan Kilua Bofin jetted off to Freiburg, Germany for the Sustainable Cities Summer Camp which brought young people from around the world together to explore what cities will look like in the future.

There were nearly 400 global applicants for the 32 available places and after a competitive selection process, remarkably, all three Irish students chosen were from Kilkenny.

The two-week long camp mixed fun activities with workshops and trips to places like windfarms to provide an engaging experience while teaching attendees about sustainable city planning.

“It was incredibly immersive,” says Rory. “You never felt like you were just sitting in a classroom taking notes, you were actually learning.”

“It’s really interesting to see, instead of just looking at pictures and taking down notes, you’re actually seeing how systems work,” he adds.

The camp is funded by a non-profit foundation and aims to ensure that no one is excluded due to travel costs, increasing its accessibility to all applicants regardless of their background.

“It was definitely an eye-opener and a once in a lifetime opportunity to have a place that actually flies you out. All costs were covered, like accommodation and food. You don’t really hear that anywhere,” Rose outlines.

Dozens of nationalities were represented in Freiburg, mostly from around Europe, but also further afield from places like Morocco and Singapore.

READ NEXT: Kilkenny Islamic Centre continue to raise funds funds for new permanent building

This diversity allowed for an exchange of ideas with students taking new perspectives back to their own countries.

“It’s really important to get a foreign point of view on a topic,” Rory says. “I would say one of the big problems we have in Kilkenny is the cycling infrastructure and traffic congestion whereas a person who lives in Vienna may say social problems or economic issues would be their top priority,” he explains.

Towards the end of the experience, attendees got the chance to put what they’d learned to use by building their own 3D, small-scale city blocks, which were then put together to form a sustainable city.

“Not only were we learning, we had to implement it,” Rose says. “Each group got a challenge so for mine, it was that half the people living there were old and going through a heat wave, so we had to keep that in mind,” she reflects.

Rory and Susan have returned to school in Kilkenny while Rose is headed for college, but the camp has already changed how they view sustainability in Kilkenny and their thoughts on how the County Council can make improvements.

“They’ve done a lot recently but it still needs a lot of work,” Rory asserts. “I think one thing that’s really important is solar panels because whenever I’m cycling around town, something I do now is to look on the roofs of houses to count how many have them and sometimes there’s only about two or three out of 50.”

“I think the council and the government as a whole really need to do a lot to incentivize people to use solar panels,” he concludes.

TAP HERE FOR MORE LOCAL NEWS