IU employees collect kilometres for climate protection and sustainability

• Sweating for a good cause: as part of a fitness challenge, IU employees circled the world 10.5 times in March through sporting and sustainable activities. 
• IU planted 1,000 trees per round-the-world trip to protect the climate and promote sustainable development. 
• Cooperation partner is the Impact Hero organisation with its "Grow my Tree" project. 
   

Erfurt, 5 April 2023. "I&U Around the World – together around the world, for the world" was once again the motto of this year's internal fitness challenge at IU International University of Applied Sciences (IU). For the third time in a row, IU proclaimed March as fitness month with the aim of circling the world as often as possible for a good cause. The employees of Germany's largest university achieved a total of 10.5 circumnavigations of the globe, surpassing their result from the previous year. More than 120 IU teams collected kilometres with sporting and sustainable activities, tracked them in an app and together covered 423,364 kilometres. For every round-the-world trip, IU's parent company, IU Group, donated 1,000 trees in cooperation with the "Grow my Tree" aid project by Impact Heroes, totaling 10,500 trees.

Moving together for climate protection & sustainability 

The 10,500 trees will be planted in the Usambara Mountains in Tanzania. They have a carbon sequestration potential of around 231 tonnes of CO2 per year and support the restoration of biodiversity over an area of around 45,000 square metres. The number of trees is equivalent to around 105 working days for the people in the region and enables them to learn more about sustainable development. The work in tree nurseries and in planting, caring for and monitoring trees creates sustainable income opportunities that benefit women in particular. At the same time, the incentives for illegal deforestation are combated through education and financial empowerment. 

The tree projects supported by Impact Hero help combat climate change, create habitats for animals, ensure healthy soils and restore water cycles, while strengthening local communities through income and education opportunities. Impact Hero works with project partners in over 20 countries in the Global South, where the impact is greatest. For IU, Impact Hero is the ideal partner for its employee campaign, as it is increasingly committed to sustainable development on an economic, social and ecological level and is guided by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

Healthy & responsible employees 

Teams from all IU locations around the world came together to take part in the challenge. Using the fitness app "TeamFit", the teams recorded their activities, which were converted into kilometres. Any form of movement counted, such as walking, home workouts, house cleaning, mindfulness and breathing exercises and much more. A special focus this year was on sustainable activities. For example, anyone who swapped their car for a train or bike, drank tap water instead of bottled water, took a vegetarian or vegan day or shortened their shower time collected additional kilometres in a simple and sustainable way. Around ten per cent of all kilometres achieved were based on sustainable activities, which puts it in second place compared to all other activities. Only steps taken accounted for an even greater proportion of the overall result, with 25 per cent. In addition, all participants received many helpful tips for a more sustainable lifestyle during the challenge period as well as background information on IU's many other ESG initiatives. 

"Sustainability and social responsibility start within the company itself. Through campaigns like this, we try to raise awareness within IU and support our employees to grow personally and make a positive contribution together - for our students and our environment," says Čaičics.

IU students also make a sustainable contribution 

Students at IU International University of Applied Sciences have the opportunity to voluntarily do without printed study scripts. In this way, they actively reduce paper, protect the environment and even give something back to nature, as IU plants more trees in return. So far, more than 300,000 scripts have been saved and over 33,000 trees have been planted (cooperation partner until 2023 was treedom, since 2023 it is Impact Hero).

Why planting trees with Impact Hero?