CTNAcademy, social responsibility & sustainability
Usually I don't write here about political topics or the like. Of course, we share certain moral values here... tolerance, equality, moral conduct, treating people fairly and so on. But apart from that I think there are many possiblities how to engage oneself individually in times of crisis such as the current war in Ukraine. There are many great projects out there which cause little overhead and will have great effect and where we can try to have a positive impact.
However, I do see a direct organisational responsibility we have here. As we live during a climate crisis we need to define our position on this fundamental topic and make our approach transparent. Because just like any other "organisation" we have a direct impact by what we do and we can't really pretend we don't.
Three pillar model of sustainable development
The three-pillar model defines sustainable development in such a way that environmental, economic and social goals are to be implemented equally. If we take this model as a conceptual starting point, it seems clear that "as a normal sports club" we have a socially positive impact by connecting people. Tolerance, fairness and shared positive experiences help to overcome political, religious or social differences and to gain understanding for one another, of other people and other cultures. And as a Taijiquan club in particular, we are also aware of the health effects of our "sport" or our "art", which means that we also have an additional positive impact on society - be it directly as people will train and to improve their mental and phycical health and awareness, or indirectly through training Taiji coaches and instructors who will then make the art more public and teach other people in turn.
Bummer, our ecological impact is not so great...
In the ecological field, our impact is unfortunately negative. Of course, if we use common CO2 calculators we do not achieve maximum values. Nevertheless, we can identify three negative drivers in particular:
- international trips by the trainers
- the mobility of participants
- production of products such as manuals, print outs, training clothes or similar
What can we do to turn at least neutral?
At the moment we are reacting to this as follows:
- most trips are made by train
- we offset international trips extensively and significantly higher than recommended (via atmosfair.org, betterplace.org)
- some of the training and educational activities have been transferred to our online academy here
- we are supporters of Sports For Future
- we are co-initiators of Friends4Future
- we make sure that the clothing offered is produced ecologically and fairly
- there are vegetarian and vegan options available at seminars
We hope to tackle the issue even more intensively in the future and also to develop more regenerative solutions, so we can finally become really climate-positve. If you have any suggestions or ideas, please do not hesitate to contact us!