Several of this year’s Alumni Scholarship Recipients helped stage a bike clinic at CEU on April 24, highlighting carbon-free transportation as part of sustainability efforts on campus.
Held in honor of Earth Day, the event featured a breakfast of organic, locally-sourced food, followed by a workshop demonstrating bicycle maintenance skills for CEU students, staff and faculty, and tips for safely traveling Budapest by bike. (See event pics here.)
Volunteers from the Budapest Bike Kitchen, a local cycling advocacy group, demonstrated basic-to-advanced bike repair skills. They also showed off seven refurbished bicycles that will serve as the pilot fleet of for CEU’s new Bike Share program—the first of its kind at a Hungarian university.
The ASRs volunteered their time to prepare the meal and assist in the planning and execution of the event, which was held in the outdoor bicycle parking area in CEU’s Nador utca 15 building.
The Earth Day event also saw presentations from “A Project for Degrowth” author Vincent Liegey and Zsolt Kilian, a local traffic engineer and volunteer with the Hungarian Cyclist Association. The event was sponsored by the CEU Sustainable Campus Initiative and the Campus Redevelopment Office.
Biking for sustainability
Earlier in April some ASRs assisted in the refurbishment of the bikes, which had been left in CEU storage. Several also participated, along with other CEU students, faculty and staff, in a Critical Mass sponsored bike rally through the city on April 20, Earth Day. (See pics here.)
Bicycling has become an increasingly popular mode of transport, both within the CEU community and in Budapest in general. Between 50 and 100 students, staff and faculty ride to campus every day. (See here for a video on CEU biking culture.)
The CEU Bike Share program would allow CEU community members to borrow bicycles for short-term usage throughout the year. The Pilot Program launch is expected by the start of the 2013-14 academic year, with seven to 10 bikes making up the pilot fleet.
Projects such as this are an example of the commitment to sustainable, environmentally friendly practices at CEU. Alumni who wish to support a greener campus at CEU may do so via the Sustainability Fund of the Alumni Campaign.