The video records the opening and panel discussions of Tomorrow University’s first Winter Immersion meetup in Amsterdam, centered on the theme of human and planetary wellbeing. Speaker A introduces the challenge of creating a safe operating space that respects planetary boundaries while ensuring a decent life for all people. Subsequent speakers share personal connections to the theme, emphasizing the importance of self‑connection, collaboration, and storytelling. Speakers discuss the circular economy as a framework that links environmental limits with social justice, highlighting the need for collective action and cross‑disciplinary collaboration. The session also announces a storytelling workshop aimed at helping participants convey complex sustainability ideas to diverse audiences. Overall, the meetup seeks to inspire learners worldwide to connect personally, work together, and translate sustainability concepts into compelling narratives.
Chapters
Welcome to our first Tomorrow University meetup in the beautiful city of Amsterdam. We're here gathering learners from all over the world for 2 days of connection, deep and meaningful impact, and exploring our theme, human and planetary wellbeing, hosted at the wonderful Equals. Let's dive in. One of our major challenges today is to create a safe operating space for humanity. That means, on the one hand, respecting the planetary boundaries, so the capacity of our ecosystem that it can sustain our way of life. And on the other hand, to create a respectable and decent way of life for every human on this planet. And that's why we chose this topic for the meetup: human and planetary well-being.
I think it's amazing that each time we get to go to a different city, we get to see a little bit more of Europe. We get to meet different people because of that, because different people come to each meetup, which is really nice. It becomes a flavor of a city as well. This theme of human and planetary well-being is very close to my heart as well. I think taking care of ourselves and taking care of each other and taking care of the planet is super, super important. So it's been really nice to dive into that theme.
Where, let's say, the society, the workplaces, everything is changing because of technology, it's even becoming more crucial to be connected to ourselves. And if we are not connected to ourselves, it's difficult to connect to others. It's difficult to have, let's say, true meaningful connections in our work environment as well as in our private environments. And if we want to have a change, or positive impact in the world and really changing something from the roots, we have to focus on ourselves first.
Talking about circular economy in a round of experts was a bit tough for me, so it was truly stepping out of my comfort zone. But in the end, I found out I'm not that far away from circular economy. And we as an event agency, or me as an expert in events, I can truly tell a story about circular economy and how important it is to proceed.
First of all, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed the panel discussion. Let's come back to the essence of circular economy. For me, like I mentioned, it's the hard boundaries of the planetary boundaries, the limits of what we can do with our environment on the one side, and on the other side, the social boundaries that we have, how we want to form a society that's just for everybody, where everybody has equal opportunities. For me, that's at the heart of the Collaboration to make circular economy work is crucial.
It is very hard already to make the change if you're on your own, and if you're trying to tackle this main big issue that has an impact on the whole wide world, doing it alone is not going to be the easiest of endeavors. So working collaboration and connecting to as many people as possible that have the same interests It's only going to push you forward, and it's way more fun to do it together than alone.
Imagine coming to this place, to the meetup, with so many new people with all the different perspectives and backgrounds and ideas that they share, and you have your own and you want to share it with the community, but you don't really know how. It might be complex and you don't know how to engage people the same way you do with a complex topic. So this is where storytelling comes into place, and this is why I come into place, and I feel honored to hold this workshop about storytelling. I've done this for 15 years, and now is my chance to pass it on to the community.
It was incredible to talk about human and planetary well-being, to learn about the connection between those topics, and really to see our community of learners to show up, share their challenges, share their reflections, and how they want to make a positive impact. I'll see you in the next meetup.
