And so it ends

I have been working on many of your problems this year, but these are the objectives you voted me in based on and I hope I have lived up to your expectations. I have poured my heart and soul into this position, and hope that I have made a difference to you. Thank you for trusting me and allowing me to have the best and most formative year of my life so far.

Rachel will be a fantastic Officer, so see her for whatever you need as she’ll be there for you.

Student engagement in Activities
•Online sign up: Now live, training sessions to be held this term and the start of next. Look at developing for Sports clubs next year.
•Ensure there are enough meeting rooms in the union and work with Accomodation and Campus Services to accommodate societies wherever possible. ACS will be allowing societies to use spaces in the student villages for free. The wider University are looking at space availability, and the new Union building will have lots of open, bookable spaces.
•Set up the ‘Adopt a charity’ scheme: It works! 7 Societies and Sports clubs have entered the scheme this year. Next year RAG have introduced a ‘Clubs and Societies Liaison’ committee role to help the increasing numbers of clubs and socs raising money, and to champion this scheme.
•Push the bespoke GIAG concept. After talking to the programme organiser, we decided this is a good service to offer but not practical to increase it’s capacity as it’s very time consuming with a low take up rate after investigation.
•Dance you socks off: Is hopefully going to be organised for during freshers week next year. Hip Hop Soc want to take a lead on it which is great. We’ve not done it this year due to the very limited spaces available in the Union because of the building works. Doing it next year will be a great way to launch the new building.
•Make GIAG and event tickets available to medics at the Hallamshire: This was investigated at great length but no practical solution could be found. Possibly have a rethink about how it works – possibly selling the day trip ones online.
•Promote the Sheffield Graduate Award: There were double the number of entrants this year, and after discussions with the pro vice chancellors I have secured permission for the certificates to be received at graduation rather than separately.
•Expand the ‘inclusion officer’ role: The consultation process is complete, however Rachel will be continuing the work with the students to finalise it all and update the handbooks and training.
•Increase the number of first years and post graduates involved in volunteering: A Post Grad summer volunteering programme was put together and has been incredibly successful. It’s hoped this will be continued each summer.
•Increase society volunteering: Societies Committee have been pushing this all year and many societies have introduced ‘charities and volunteering’ committee positions.

Help new, small and struggling societies
•Establish a weekly societies surgery: This is run by societies committee each week. We’ve had 104 societies visit us at 21 surgeries this year and also introduced an evening session.
•Joint Uni and Hallam societies: We’ve got the policy etc sorted by it needs approving by Hallam, Rachel will be continuing this work.
•Merge SEF and Equipment fund: This process worked really well to clarify the system which students told us was confusing. Under spend should be less.
•Develop a brief guide to society finances: The birdy document as it’s now called. Available both online and a few printed ones in the Source for reference. These were well received and apparently clarified the rules. There will now be a version available online and for the Source to give out all year round.
•Reduce society deficit through a targeted approach: Zoe Speakman and I have been meeting with societies to plan repayments and actually has positively increased societies activities with the aim of raising money.

Show off the great things students do!
•Open appropriate events to the public: Many societies do this for their events, e.g sing soc. This message has been pushed out although can definitely be build on more. We invited members of the local community to the Activities Awards.
•Improve society publicity: I revamped the Activities newsletter and put structures in place to ensure it’s always full. Surgeries on publicity were popular and I have been encouraging societies to use their mini websites. This has worked with a number of them successfully advertising their events without further input from myself or staff.
•Expand the Activities awards: This year it encompassed Socs, Working Coms, Representative Coms, RAG, Volunteering, and CDCs which was all really well received. The event was held in the Octagon for 280 people - over doubling last years attendance

Connections
•Provide opportunities for society networking: Networking board is being used more. A working/Representative committee forum was held to encourage networking. Rachel is looking at more networking in Intro.
•Increase partnerships and discussion of all the faith groups: Interfaith work has been very successful with many trips to places of worship, and interfaith cafes. A grant of £5111 has been secured for the project.
•Provide an index of internal services which can be provided by the Union and other societies: Zoe Speakman and I put this together and it’s on the networking board and available from the Source desk.
•Find opportunities for societies to volunteer to help other societies: Is proving difficult but I think it will be more organic.

Oiling the nuts and bolts
•Update the Union and society constitutions, and handbook: A democracy handbook was written by Paul Tobin, and used for training by me. It’s online and many societies said it was very helpful. This will be part of the new handbook. The Society handbook will be worked on this Summer by Zoe and Rachel in line with Rachels objectives.
•Re-think the training process for new committee members: Zoe has added lots more training sessions based on the popular surgeries. Still more to be done with Rachel this year.

For the last time,
Love Claire xxx

Au revoir, aufiderzein, and goodbye

So technically I have finished my term in office and Rachel Colley is now your Activities Officer for 2010/11. Before I disappear completely I thought I had better tell you what I was doing in my last month.

June saw the final and epic RAG event of the year - Treasure Hunt Europe. I was lucky enough to represent Sheffield in Europe by stewarding the event in city 3, Strasbourg. The sponsored event hopes to raise about £15,000, so look out for the total once every last penny has been received.

Teams of Shef Uni students met in Lille on the Monday evening, poised and ready to receive the first clue to lead them to secret city 1. There were four secret cities, at each one the teams had to race to a checkpoint to get the next clue which would lead them on to the next city’s checkpoint. The final city held a prize of £1000 for the first team there, but many people took part to see the cities they were passing through and spend a week not knowing where their next stop was or how to get there!

The final route was Lille--Amsterdam--Luxemburg--Strasbourg--Berlin, all cities worth visiting if you’ve never been.

Nabil, my co-steward, and I were in Strasbourg on ‘Les Ponts Couvert’ which means the covered the bridges. They were no longer covered. It rained. We got wet. Here are a couple of photos which we took on the trip.

Teams reading the firct clue at Lille


A team at the bridge in Strasbourg


The lovely view from the checkpoint in Strasbourg.

The final city was Berlin, a brilliant city, however as Nabil and I were in the penultimate city we didn’t get to Berlin until just before the end party. We led our hostel full of participants to the end party where everyone met up and shared T.H.E. stories over music and some lovely German Weiss beers. Over the whole event, there were no major disasters - one team almost travelled all the way to Copenhagen but after managing to avert that disaster they joined us at the end party.

Look out for T.H.E next year, and if you fancy a challenge then why not take it on?

Love Claire xxx