There will definitely be things that I miss in this summary because what a whirl-wind of a year. Everyone told me it would fly by and here I am in June, summarising one of the most wonderful years I’ve had in Aber.
From conference season where we got to network with other sabbatical officers to where we end the year in pride month with a chalk the steps celebration. My focus this year was to develop wellbeing services for students, focusing on youth suicide prevention following the Charlie Asked for Help movement, supporting survivors, and celebrating our community.
It was important for me to continue Cam’s work on the Beyond the Binary campaign and collaborating with our Campaigns and Democracy coordinator to plan campaigns around everything spanning from the cost-of-living crisis to National Conversations Week.
It would be difficult to put everything into this, so I’ll summarise the three things I’ve done this year that have made me feel particularly proud:
- International Women's Day events! Our collaboration across the campus and community for this day, marking 100 years of the Welsh Women's Petition for Peace and having this advertised in the Welsh Centre for International Affairs as part of Empower Aber, that I had the privilege of working with Tiff on. During this time we also had the local mayor attend our Reclaim the Night March while we are nearly 50 years of Reclaim the Night in the UK. And something truly special was our work with the Women's Research Network creating a visibility award recognising women and gender non-conforming staff in research at our university.
- I have been really involved with the work the university and the undeb have been doing around supporting survivors and putting the right kind of provision around consent. From delivering a consent module for SHAG week, contributing to the sexual violence and misconduct policy, and changing the code of conduct to clubs and socs. I’m hoping this will have a long-term impact.
- Following the Charlie Asked for Help campaign, we have managed to change the student referral form to make it shorter and more accessible, I’ve written for the undeb website, built the bookhouse to memorialise Charlie, co-chaired the Suicide Safer Steering group, contributed to the Health and Wellbeing Strategy, and worked with NUS Cymru on their youth suicide consultation work.
I’m looking forward to seeing what Emily does! Wishing her the best!’