Sustainable and responsible Diak
At Diak, sustainability and responsibility are part of our strategy: our goal is a more humane and sustainable world. In our operations, we emphasize the principles of ecosocialism, according to which we aim to take Diak’s operations towards more humane, social and ecologically sustainable direction.
This page contains examples of how sustainability and responsibility are implemented in our operations.
University of Fair Trade
Diak is the first Finnish university to receive the Fair Trade title. We offer our staff Fair Trade coffee, and Fair Trade products are available at our campuses. Through our activities, we promote sustainable values and social justice. We also highlight the importance of Fair Trade in our communications.
Read more about Fair Trade on the Finnish Fair Trade website.
Contributing to ecosocial education
Diak’s degree programmes are locally, socially and globally in a key position in building an even more sustainable world. In Diak, education embracing and building on an ecosocial way of thinking aims to create both lifestyle and value changes. In order to realize these goals, it is necessary to include ways of development that are societally and globally sustainable.
Diak is both planning and currently offering various study modules and degree programmes that promote ecosocial education.
- Ecosocial Approaches, Theoretical Foundation, and Controversies (5 op) and Strategic Approaches to Complex Ecosocial Issues in Different Context (5 op) are offered in the English master’s degree programmes as an optional study module. The course consists of two parts that provide the students an undestanding of ecosocial concepts, theory, changes and recent trends. The goal is to undestand the systemic nature of global and local challenges and phenomena, and recognise the elements and scope of ecosocial phenomena and the complex relations between them.
- Humanely, socially and ecologically sustainable development (5 ects) is planned to be executed latest fall 2022. The study module is currently available as an elective for degree students, and it will be later offered in the open university of applied sciences selection as well. The study module provides tools to understand the significance of ethics and values in a globalizing world, as well as the meaning of equal, fair and humane development according to the aims of the UN’s Agenda2030.
- Coming: multidisciplinary social services and health care master’s degree. The degree builds expertise on ecosocial issues, provides deeper understanding of the ways of examining individual and community-level well-being and capabilities, as well as provides skills for building dialogue, ensuring agency and involvement, and strengthening democracy. The degree programme also aims to develop ecosocial innovation based on research and work-life experience.
Aiming to reduce carbon footprint
Diak is involved in the joint calculation of the carbon footprint in universities, that combines the energy costs gained from real estate, purchases, and travel. The aim of the joint calculation is to obtain comparable information on the carbon footprint from different universities of applied sciences.
With the calculation, we get information about what Diak’s carbon footprint is made of and we can make plans to reduce it, for example by taking into account the carbon footprint in purchases and, for example, the energy efficiency of our property.
Responsible employer
In 2021-2023, Diak was awarded one of the the most responsible employers. The recognition is based on the results of Finland’s largest work life responsibility survey, conducted by Oikotie. The Responsible Employer study examines how responsibility is realised in the workplace according to the opinion of employees.
The Responsible Employer campaign commits itself by promoting the six principles of responsibility. The principles are:
- Non-discrimination
- Worklife balance and well-being
- Investing in supervisor work
- The importance of work and development at work
- Salaries set in portion with the demand of the tasks
- Good applicant experience
Find more about the implementation of the principles on Diak’s Career page.
A member of ARVO
Since 2022 Diak has been a member of ARVO. ARVO, the Finnish Association of Social Enterprises, is an alliance and network of social enterprises, aiming to develop social entrepreneurship in Finland. By taking part in the network we can increase our understanding of the needs of social enterprises and better our ability to answer these needs with our diverse research, education and innovation know-how.