Co-op Student – Climate Action Program; City of Victoria
For this Co-op term I have been working in the City of Victoria’s Climate Action Program. I have been working in various projects which include a business case for the cost of doing nothing about the climate crisis, gathering data on commercial and residential building energy consumption and related emissions, and extracting and summarizing data from a community engagement survey.
For this term one of my main goals is to hone my skills on data visualization; as such I have further improved my Excel skills and learned how to use Power BI. I have also had the amazing opportunity to witness a regional climate workshops and interact with the people that are at the forefront of climate policy in the Capital District. This was a very valuable experience since I had always been curious about how governments align their goals and actions to battle climate change and its impacts.
Getting to participate in unique experiences such as the Regional Climate Action Workshop was a true privilege, and one of the reasons that I would highly recommend other students to participate in co-op. This part of my work placement proved to me that Co-op signifies the chance to really immerse myself in the field that I am interested in but really understand how it works at a deeper level.
The best part of this term in particular was getting to see my team work on projects that have the potential to set a precedent at the National level and change the lives of Victoria’s residents. Not only did co-op give me the opportunity to work with these exceptional people but I was able to pick their brains to understand their motivations and passions for what they do which in confirmed that the kind of work that they do is something that I want to be involved with in the future.