Odara Medagedara

University of Edinburgh

I established Concrete to Jungle in 2020 as a University of Edinburgh undergraduate student. Despite the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, I ensured this award-winning sustainability project achieved its goal of increasing the involvement of plants in peoples’ lives by encouraging students to take their first steps towards growing their own food.

This project demonstrated how simple a task this can be by hosting a series of engaging workshops and seminars to teach people how to make and maintain indoor herb and vegetable gardens. Keeping the target audience in mind, these gardens are low maintenance, making them perfect for students who might have limited space, time, and resources. However, everyone, including those housed in university-owned student accommodation have a windowsill – which is all you need!

As such, Concrete to Jungle is an effective and engaging project which increased the involvement of plants in peoples’ lives.

Top 3 Learnings

1. It was important that I planned our project thoroughly from start to finish.
2. I learnt how valuable effective marketing is to increase the impact of our work.
3. I found it helpful to deliver our project to an established audience before branching out.