I'm nearly two months into being your Activities officer, so I thought it was a good time to catch you all up on what I’ve been up to since I started!

The first month was mainly training on how to be an elected officer, including topics such as EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity), being a trustee, social media, and much more! 

I also went to a NUS conference hosted by Leeds Beckett University, which was a three day conference where I met other activities officers from across the UK and got to speak with them about how their Students’ Unions are run. It was an exciting opportunity to develop my networking skills and team working skills. We covered many topics in this conference, like how to campaign for change, how to improve our listening and speaking skills, and how to run effectively as a team. Myself and the other Officers learnt a lot from this conference, and we can’t wait to show you through our campaigns!

Since the conference, I have had many ideas about how to improve our Students’ Union! I have decided to work on improving the quality of life for all student staff members, by getting them included in important training and encouraging them to get to know sports clubs and societies. From my experience being a student staff member over my four years at University, I’ve found it difficult to manage my work-life balance. I want to support student staff members by giving them helpful guidance on how to control their academic work and their job, whilst also making time for themselves. 

I've also been working with the Schools Engagement Lead to develop a Nursing Buddy System which is an opportunity for first year Nursing students to receive support from second year Nursing students. It’s also a great opportunity for the second year students as it gives them the skills of supporting peers. We hope to push this out to more courses too if all goes well!

Wait…what about her original manifesto points?

Whilst I've got many, many more ideas that I’d love to campaign for, I haven’t forgotten about what I promised you all when I first ran for this position. To recap, they were:

1. Increased transport

2. More support for old and new societies

3. Supporting cultural and liberation groups in sports

These are still very important priorities for me, so here's an update on them!

In terms of increased transport, there is work underway to create one Students’ Union account with Preston Community Transport, which means sports clubs and societies will simply have to fill out a form on the UCLanSU website when they are in need of a minibus, and we do the rest! I also have plans to add a transport page to the website which includes bus times, and any other travel information that individuals or societies may find useful!

For my second point, supporting old and new societies, I have had a say in how Committee Training is run this year, and we have included lots of useful material for committee members which I think should help them run much more smoothly throughout the year. Furthermore, I have decided to bring back the society scoreboard! This is where societies get set “missions” that each have a certain number of points attached to them, and when societies send evidence of them completing certain missions, they get points! This will be totalled up at the end of each semester, and there may even be a few prizes at the end of the year, so keep an eye out for that!

For my final original manifesto point, inclusivity for cultural and liberation groups, we have decided to include disability training within the committee training for sports and societies. We are continuing to work with the University to include EDI students in everything we have to offer and will hopefully soon reach the point where this isn’t something that marginalised students have to worry about. 

I am still continuing to develop my manifesto, and I will keep you all updated on this page as much as I can! If you have any questions about this blog, please email me at suactivities@uclan.ac.uk