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

Staying Up? Keep it Down!

It's sunny, hot, coming to the end of exams, and the tinme of year when you probably want to stay up late partying and having BBq's - Woo!

Just one thing though, remember that at 3am not everyone around you will want to hear your stories about getting stuck in the paternoster lift, or how your friends abused your facebook status when you nipped for a loo break in the IC.

This year the Union and University have been working on a campaign called 'Staying up? Keep it down!' which we're using to remind you to try and be a considerate housemate and neighbour. It's not just the grown ups who sleep at normal times, other students do too and I bet you've been really annoyed by your housemate or neighbour who woke you up at 4am before your deadline or 9 o'clock lecture.

You'll see our little logo on all evening events posters now to help you remember this message, and around your area you might have noticed some enormous signs on lamp posts have appeared. These have also got the 'Staying up? Keep it Down! logo on them and we're put these up to help everyone remember to be quiet and not distrub each other late at night.

So remember, enjoy the sun and summer, but if you're staying up, keep it down please :0)

Love Claire xxx

One click wonder

There is always a feeling amongst students that if you don't sign up for a society at the fairs, then you miss out - it's not true! People should be able to sign up all year round and get stuck in whenever they like. To help this, I've introduced an online society sign up process.

How does it work?
All you do is log into the Union website using your Uni email address and password, then click on the little button to join each society's mailing list. You'll find this on the society's mini website.

After you've done this, you should recieve emails from the society, inviting you to join them for meetings and activities. Easy!

For societies, it helps because...

1. It creates an email distribution list which you can add your own members to manually or by uploading a membership spreadsheet
2. the list is refreshed each year so you only ever email people who are currenltly interested in your society
3. The list can also have phone numbers and be used as a record of who has and hasn't paid their membership
4. It helps you get more members!
5. You do it all using your society email address and password, and your mini website

Societies - you need to know how to use this wonderful system so please check out my training notes (which are really short with a demo and pictures!) or come to a surgery next year.

Enjoy!

Love Claire xxx

Activities Awards 2010 - Bigger and better than ever before

This year, Societies Committee made it their aim to give the Activities Awards a bigger and more prestigious profile than ever before. My personal objective was to make it a true Activities Awards, encompassing Societies, Committees, Volunteering, Fund raising, and Communities. We also wanted to use it as an opportunity to show the wider community how fantastic our students are.

The committee each spent about 30 hours considering, debating, and eventually deciding on our 21 group awards from 300 nominations. They also had the incredibly difficult task of deciding which of our 27 individuals nominated for ‘Outstanding contribution’ deserved to be shortlisted, or receive Bronze, Silver, or Gold awards. In the case of ‘Outstanding contribution to Departmental Societies’ we had to awards three golds which was an exception to the rule as it was such a close challenge.

Originally, the committee organised this event for 160 people in Firth Court, with a strictly formal theme and a seated meal. When tickets went on sale, we sold out within 3 days – not all the shortlisted people had bought theirs, EEK! We made the snap decision (10 working days before the event!) to move it to the Octagon and aim to sell 250 tickets.

We actually organised it for a total of 280 people, with more still desperate for tickets. At just £10 a head including the James Bond themed Population, it was a night not to be missed. Key people from the Council and Philip Harvey the registrar of the University confirmed their attendance for this event, raising the profile of our students to the University and Sheffield.

The committee really pulled it off on the day, with 27 tables, a stage, the hall to decorate, and a run through to be had in just 4 hours due to the fair which finished at 3pm! Within hours the room looked stunning. All the silver and purple balloons had been blown up that day, causing bruised fingers from knotting, and severe frustration from all the tangling of ribbon! The balloon arch which was created by Danielle with the help of the committee was brilliant, although it had to be carefully snaked across the concourse without it floating away. An interesting challenge it has to be said!

Vitoria and Danielle’s wonderful table decorations were set up quickly with a small team. The purple and silver Societies Committee colours were reflected in everything at the awards. Each table had a balloon cluster, champagne bubbles, silver star confetti, and tiny individually wrapped silver and purple Cadbury’s dairy milk bars. Lemon Fresh also kindly did a table quiz, which was lemon themed and the winners, Tapton tapton barmy army, won a box of Fancie cupcakes, mmmm!

Ceilidh society and the Singers Society performed for us at the start and interval, which was brilliant. Everyone loved them and it gave a real taste of how tallented our students are. Next year we would like more performances, and a huge thanks goes to both these societies.

The whole evening went incredibly well, with everyone looking stunning, wonderful food, and Societies committee presenting awards incredibly confidently. All the winners can be found on the Awards webpages, but a particular well done must go to Economics Society who won ‘Society of the year’, and the International Students Committee who were crowned ‘Working committee of the year’.

On a personal level, I’d like to congratulate Societies committee for their incredible hard work on the awards – both new and old committee. Everyone had their particular roles, however EXTRA MASSIVE thanks go to…

Kab: for organising the awards and being in the driving seat on the night

Marium: for doing all the design work and keeping track of all the nominations.

Victoria and Danielle: for the best decs we could ever have imagined

Alan: doing the incredible powerpoint and slide shows

Rachel: for giving out the awards on stage

Sarah (treasurer): for putting up with me going ‘it’s fine, we’ll just find more money somethwere….’

Matt Stafford: generally picked up lots and an all round hero!

Bring on The Activities Awards 2011…

Love Claire xxx

Students raise over £2000 to get Chile get back on its feet

Saturday 27th March 2010 saw the fantastic 'Sheffield helps Chile' event which was hosted by the Mexican and Latin American Society with the Chilean students here at sheffield.

The event was full to the brim with students and their families to enjoy Chilean food and music, follwed by a party. Whilst the event was a great opportunity for many students to come together, there was strong emphasis on learning about and understanding the effects of the earthquake which hit Chile on 27th February.

From the hard work and generosity of these students, the event raised a total of £2176.33, every penny of which has been directly donated to the Red Cross Chile appeal.

Well done to all those who organised and generously donated.
If you would like to donate to help Chile, please give to RAG's appeal.

Free food and interfaith fun

Well this term we've really been flying with it and hopefully you've spotted us about. At the start of March we held an Interfaith Cafe which was great. It was just a chilled out couple of hours in Coffee Revolution where anyone could come and chat to people of different faiths. The idea wasn't to specifically talk about faith and issues to do with it, but just to meet new people. We had people from a number of different faiths which made it a really diverse and interesting evening; Sikh, Jewish, Catholic, Christian, Baha'I(find out about this faith at the next event!), Agnostic (thinks there might be a 'God', but doesn't follow a religion) and Athiests (Doesn't believe in a 'God').

The next cafe will be after Easter, look out for it on the website and come down to meet some lovely people over coffee and cake.

During World Week, the Faiths Forum thought it would be a great idea to do something around faith and food, so we held a small event called 'Find Faith in Food'. It was decided that food is a very powerful incentive to attend an event, but also a great talking point when it comes to food.

This little event paired up people of different faiths, or people of a faith with those who don't follow a religion. Everyone marked on a giant map where they are from and where their religion is from - some very creative individuals marked off the map on the wall to signify the powerful thought that God is transcendent and can't be placed on a map. After marking the map to link up faith and global significance, people ate their free lunch and planned a menu together. Things to think about were not only what you are or are not permitted to eat in particular faiths, and why, but also rituals around food and eating, and where foods come from. This was again a brilliant and diverse event with lots of people from diverse backgrounds both in terms of faith and nationality.

So look out for more interfaith action next term so you can meet people of different faiths and find about about what it all means to people.
See you soon,
Love Claire xxx