a week of planning

It's time for my weekly blog to let everyone know what I have been upto in the last week and on reflection it has been a whole lot of planning.

I have been working with Katie (VPS) to get plans into action for the Wellbeing event for Welcome Week, together we are going to be working on creating the one stop shop for improving your student lifestyle. With activities information ranging from excercise to nutrition, from stress to sexual health there should be something for everyone. Keep an eye out for more details on what to expect.

I have also been planning what the Guild is going to do to try and help student parents this year. Working with the recent NUS research and student parents from our campus we are going to try and get right to the heart of how we can make things easier for student parents. The first item on the agenda is to get a networking event set up during the first couple of weeks of term. Isolation has been highlighted as a big issue for student parents who cannot go out and socialise in the same ways as other students and also adds to the high drop our rates amongst student parents. We aim to host a coffee morning where students can come with their children and meet new people and socialise in a child friendly environment. If you are a student parent and would like to help organising these events then let me know.

I have also been helping the welcome week committee in their plans to make freshers fest just as safe and supportive as it is fun. So whether that be condoms or working out how many units you've had to drink, your welcome week crew will have it covered. So don't forget to 'Chill Out' this freshers week!

I have also been keeping myself busy with some of the more day to day stuff that us Sabbs have to do. We had Health and Safety training on monday, we must remember to bend from our knees! I was involved in the Job evaluation presentations with Ed. We are going to brining in the experts to ensure that all our staffing structures are working, that the staff know what is expected of them and how they can progress within the Guild, something that we are not doing as well as we could be at the moment. Finally I have been meeting with various schools and staff across the University that I will be working with this year and making sure that we are all up to speed ready for the fun to begin in a couple of weeks time.

For now I'm off to enjoy the bank holiday weekend, hopefully in the sunshine!

Equality and Diversity x 4

As the Vice President Welfare it won't surprise you to learn that part of my role is about promoting equality and diversity within the Guild and the University and working hard to look at how what we do impacts people. However I don't just sit on one committee but rather four.

Within the Guild itself I chair both the staff and the student equality and diversity committees. The Staff committee covers both core staff and the 300+ student staff that the Guild employs, and I chaired this committee for the first time this week. It was actually really refreshing to see the Guild taking a step back and looking at what we do, how we do it and the reasons for doing so.

Through the committee we began the task of using the Equality and Diversity monitoring forms that people fill in when applying for jobs to work out demographics within Guild staff. Once this has been done we will be able to identify areas where people are underrepresented and review how we promote our jobs to see if there is anything we can change to ensure that our applicants come from a diverse range of backgrounds. In addition to this we also started to look at possible quality marks that we can work towards attaining, not just so they look pretty on the proverbial mantlepiece but because it is another way of objectively reviewing our practice and how we can improve as an organisation.

With regards to the Student committee, this is a new project that was started last year and I am going to be working really hard to get it off the ground this year. I am currently working on the terms of reference for the committee, which well then allow us to elect guild councillors to sit on it. Once the committee is up an running, of course the first job will be to review those terms of reference to ensure we are happy with what we are aiming to acheive.

With regards to the University E & D committee and it's working group, for which I sit on both, I have no idea what is happening there yet so will let you know when I do!

Interviews and Appeals

Well my new suit had a thorough airing this week; with both interviews and appeals taking up a lot of my time. As mentioned last week there are a number of staff postions that are being recruited for at the moment and I am on the interview panel for several of them. It was an interesting experience to be sat on the other side for a change and it gave me a lot of food for thought on what it is that employers are looking for and how we can make our students more 'employable'. There are two job fairs coming up in the first few weeks of term as well as the Jobzone doing CV clinics and interview techniques. I would strongly recommend these services to all students especially those about to start applying for graduate jobs.

In addition it was the second round of appeals this week and I was kept busy along with the other Sabbs helping those students going through this difficult process. The appeals hearings can be a daunting experience for many students especially when they have to present their case in front of a panel but our job is to offer them support and try and make them feel more comfortable as well as to help them put their points across and ensure that the hearing is conducted properly.It really is one of the most rewarding parts of the job attending an appeal with a student who is after some extra support and after all our training it is nice to put what we have learnt into practice. I would like to wish all students who are having to go through this process at the moment good luck.

In other news I also had to have my official pictures for the year taken. Apologies to all freshers who will be greeted with my mug shot!

I have also been busy preparing for welcome week with plans in the pipeline to host some kind of wellbeing event along with Katie (VPS) and we had our first meeting for the democratic structure review that is going to take place this year looking at all our democratic structures and how they work ranging from Guild Council to the Officer team. It is going to be a lot of work but should make some real positive change to the Guild as well.

Finally, I have been working on my plans for 'Know your Guild', can't say much more yet but it is going to be big, so watch this space!

My first (proper) week...

Well this week was my first full week in the office and I really couldn't wait to get started (ask the rest of the team who bantered me about my early starts)

It's been a pretty hectic week - but even more productive than I could have hoped for. In between my ever increasing to-do lists (I have a sexy to do list pad) I have had a lot of planning meetings with some real exciting stuff in the pipeline for the year ahead, not everything is set in stone yet so I can't talk about all of it but here is what I have planned so far;


• The National Blood Service is back! On Friday 25th September (Welcome Week) they will be back at the Guild with the chance for students to donate blood should they chose to do so. It was one of my manifesto aims to get them back in the Guild and I am really happy to have them there from the start of the year. I aim to make this a regular thing so watch this space.

• I will be lobbying the University in light of recent recommendations from the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency) to make the mitigations process simpler and easier for every student to use as well as looking at academic support for joint honours students.


• A full review of prayer facilities across campus is already happening with plans to get all facilities advertised on the University map and lobby for more space on campus

• This year I will also be organising our World Aids day activities, SHAG (sexual health awareness and guidance) week and taking the lead on our multi-cultural celebrations…more details to follow soon.

• Working with student parents to overcome problems they face at the University and making the Guild more inclusive of their needs.

In addition to working on these plans I have also been a busy boy working on staff recruitment. As the Vice President Welfare I am involved in recruiting any staff for departments that are relevant to my remit so that includes the Jobzone, the Arc and the Mentors. Keep your eyes open for some new faces around the Guild!

I could go on but I think this blog is long enough - so for now, don’t forget to protect your Welfare with a Johnny!

an anti-facist weekend

This weekend I atteneded the anti-facist rally in Birmingham city centre, it was an interesting experience to say the least. What started of as a moderate rally both in tone and in turnout unfortunately took a turn for the worse.

A small number of racist individuals, decided to provoke the crowd and unfortunately a large proportion of the crowd took the bait. The rally which for many seemed to be a disguise for pushing a pro palestine agenda ending up undermining all of the Unite organsiers efforts and resulting to nothing more than yobbish and aggressive violent behaviour comparitive to an american ghetto.

Finally I decided to leave and after negotiating my way past the lines of riot police (who behaved admirrally if not a little to reluctant to intervene in the disquiet) I couldn't help but think that if we are going to succeed in defeating the racist and facist agenda at the next election then we need those who actually beleive in the anti-facist movement to mobilise like the other side have been doing.

I beleive that is where students can come into play and is why I along with the other officers this year will be trying to get as many of you to vote as possible.

I would really like to hear people's thoughts on this matter...

Action through advocacy training

It's the end of my first week in office and so I thought I would just post a quick blog on what I got upto;

I spent monday moving into my new office with Ed and rearranging the furniture, ordering stationary and setting up voicemail on the phone (all the important stuff!)before heading down to London for the rest of the week for Sabbatical Officer summer training.

I atteneded the NUS action through advocacy training which gave me an amazing opportunity to meet loads of other Welfare and Education officers from across the UK.
We had talks and presentations on the challenges in the year ahead for the NUS and loads of workshops to attend on stuff we want to do this year.

Overall I met some amazing people and definately came away with a few more ideas of what to do this year and how to do it.

Next week im back in the office so I guess the real work begins...

Training over...lets get going!

So I have spent the last month in training and i'm now officially about to begin.
The last month has been both hard work and emotionally draining at times but it has definately been worthwhile, here are just some of the highlights of my month of training...

> Well it was mainly filled with flip charts, mind mapping and action plans (necessary but a bit dry at times)where I had more information about the guild thrown at me than I even knew existed.

> We got thrown in the deep end with a full day simulation of being a sabb where I had to deal with swine flu, major crises and political smoozing with the univeristy. It was definately a baptism of fire!

> In between all of the guild fun I had some time out to graduate and spend a few days chilling in London!

> I also had the opportunity to do some pretty cool things during my handovers with Hollie, I got a tour of the police station (including the cells) and the CCTV operations centre, the chance to meet some of the people i'm going to be working with this year and I visited our satellite site in Stratford; the Shakespeare institute.

So, now it's time to begin...

P.S thanks to my friend Cath for the 'amazing' photograhic interpretation of being ready to start.