ISM has received the "Fair Trade" award for its Hamburg campus. For the award as a Fairtrade University, a university must fulfill several criteria. Among other things, this includes demonstrably having created awareness for fair trade and having made it visible in concrete projects.
At ISM's Hamburg campus, procurement has since been changed - Fair Trade products are now standard in dining halls, coffee kitchens and at university parties wherever possible. "The project was not a no-brainer," recaps Professor Dr. Nicole Fabisch, "because it required extra energy from all employees as well as from the students who got involved in it." The ISM Professor of Marketing & Sustainability Management was in charge of the switch to Fair Trade products.
The ISM campus in Hamburg is now officially the only Fair Trade university in the Hanseatic city. The ISM Executive Board supported this with an extra budget - "that gave everyone additional motivation, for example it allowed us to make our purchasing more sustainable," Fabisch recalls. She herself and those involved are aware that while Fair Trade cannot solve complex problems on its own, they see the initiative as another building block toward social, economic and environmental improvements, especially in the global South. "The Fair Trade seal is a start - to keep it, we have to continuously add to it," Fabisch emphasizes.
At the same time, ISM is expanding its teaching and research content, for example through the recently launched Institute for Sustainable Transformation @ISM and the part-time master's program in Sustainability Management.