Community Life

On Chapters, Regions, Squads and how the community communicates

Our international community of oikos chapters and oikees worldwide is what makes oikos as an organisation unique. Currently, the community is composed of 50 different chapters in over 27 countries, encompassing around 1000 active members. The impact and development of our local chapters can be traced in the chapter impact dashboards. Our chapters find themselves in different stages, which we quickly describe here:

Opening chapters

We frequently welcome new chapters to the oikos community. There is an elaborate process candidates go through which is accompanied by a member of the chapter development team. Working on an international level, we frequently witness that we need to adapt the process and invite generosity to certain elements (eg. who starts the chapter, how is the relationship to the university, what if there are 2 applications in 1 city etc.). Fit to context and culture are critical for long-term evolution and success. Our rule of thumb: generosity over perfection, and growing together as we move. When chapters join, they first become chapters in accession, until they get accepted by the legislative assembly.

oikos Expedition

We want to understand and learn more about other region’s approaches and development regarding sustainability in higher education. With oikos expedition, we wish to facilitate academic exchanges, generate new cross regional insights, and learn of new ways of making education more sustainable. In the future, there is the goal to connect our community to other student change agents and offer them a diverse approach to enhance their impact.

Fostering chapter continuity

With the high fluctuation in chapters and the nature of voluntary, intrinsic commitments, maintaining a chapter is a challenge from semester to semester, and highly dependent on context. Continuity refers to our wish for chapters that continue to exist and grow in the future by building on past experiences, and we support this through initiatives (eg. chapter pathways), process support (chapter coaching, LEAP for chapters) and documents. Each chapter has access to their unique chapter workspace and chapter impact dashboard, both being directly connected to the regional workspaces that provide a proper overview of what is currently happening in the regions. Check them to get an insight into the rhythm of the chapters over the term of the semesters, as well!

Closing chapters

Despite our students and our team’s best efforts, chapters sometimes face rough times and need to close the local group. Often, this happens in a silent process and we are unable to support them before the chapters fall dormant (no activity onsite, no active contact). Once this is the case and a chapter did not attend 3 legislative meetings in a row, the oikos International board can actively close chapters. Another, more recent path: trying to revive the chapters with the help of their universities and a new generation of motivated students. Read more in the chapter development field guide.

How we work with our global community

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