Since 1993 Morgen, Dutch for tomorrow, is an association which encourages the awareness of students and higher education institutions to become more aware of sustainability from a student perspective. In nearly 20 years, much lot has been achieved. The organization itself has changed a number of times, and thereby the way it works. At the moment, Morgen is a strong ‘brand’name within the world of sustainable higher education in the Netherlands.
Morgen was founded in 1993 by local student environmental organizations from multiple cities. The association was called LHUMP: the National Higher education and University Environment Platform. From 1994 to 1997, it was the students department of the Environment Active Youth (JMA). In 1997, LHUMP became an independent organization, an official association with local environmental platforms as members. In 1998, the Sustainable Higher Education foundation (DHO) arose from the LHUMP; later on, DHO evolved into a professional organization. On November 27th, 2008, LHUMP changed its name to Morgen.
In the early years the focus of LHUMP was primarily on the realization of the Copernicus Charter (signed in 1993 by 250 European rectors to focus more attention on the issue of sustainability at universities). Copernicus was mainly realized in cooperation with the local environmental platforms, partially through measures regarding recycled paper and environmentally friendly catering. Since 1996, LHUMP managed to involve universities of applied science. The number of local environmental platforms grew steadily from 1998, and LHUMP focused primarily on the network function of student groups whilst DHO took over the tasks surrounding the execution of the Copernicus Charter.
In 2010, the DHO foundation was raised through a lack of financial backing. Some of the tasks were transferred to other organizations, including GroeneGeneratie (GreenGeneration), the Sustainable Education Coalition and Hobeon. Morgen at that time positioned itself in a double role: on the one hand as a network for its member organisations, which were engaged in sustainability at the local level , on the other hand as a national project organisation that focused on integrating sustainability in the higher education sector.
In recent years, Morgen executed a number of successful projects. Examples include Share Your World (annual information market for volunteer work in developing countries, 2003-2010), Greening the Ivory Tower (conference on sustainability in higher education, 2008) , Make IT Fair (Project Sustainable IT , 2008) , the Sustainable Internship Bank (2008-2009) , the Green Bubble (price for greenwashing, 2009-2010), the Sustainable Discount Card (2010-2012) and the Manifesto of Morgen (2012).
In addition, Morgen is currently conducting two ongoing projects: the SustainaBul, the sustainability ranking of higher education institutions, and the web magazine SustainableStudent, which focuses on sustainable study, lifestyle and career. The SustainaBul was organised for the first time in 2012, whilst SustainableStudent has been online since 2008, and had a large makeover in 2013.