Here is how the project went:
We hosted a celebration event for the University of Michigan - Dearborn reducing their palm oil consumption and raising awareness of palm oil issues. UM-Dearborn is the first institution to be certified by Palm-to-Palm! We reviewed the University's journey to become Palm-to-Palm certified, then awarded the University a commemorative placard, along with the catering service team who proved instrumental in getting UM-Dearborn certified. We had two keynote speakers, Dr. Erik Patel and Dr. Paul Garber, discuss their primate conservation efforts. The keynotes were followed by on stage interviews and audience Q&A. By hosting this event, we sought to publicly recognize UM-Dearborn and inspire other institutions to pursue Palm-to-Palm certification. We believe everyone can make a difference in addressing the palm oil crisis, and to have an institution who took action to do so means that much less rainforest being scarified for palm oil products in the Global North. The event was gratifying in that we got to see over 2 years of trial and error with our certification system, as well as collaboration with the University come to fruition. We used the funds to pay for the placards and some of the event catering (which we were proud to announce was palm oil free). We learned that hosting a hybrid event is much harder than it looks. Several in-person and virtual attendees came up to us afterward saying they enjoyed the event and were glad UM-Dearborn got certified.
Through this project I/we learned:
We learned that hosting a hybrid event is much harder than it looks. Because we faced some technical difficulties (e.g., the event recording was corrupted), we plan on testing our technology setup further in advance to avoid any hiccups.
What I/we might change:
We would loop in the University's IT team sooner to coordinate our hybrid event setup.
My/our favorite part of this project was:
Seeing it finally happen after over 2 years.
Some tips, tricks or fun facts about the project:
Our event was a long time coming, but the journey is so worth it!
