Officer round up: VP Activities Clodagh
Hey! It’s Clodagh, your VP Activities at JMSU! It has been a busy but amazing start to this academic year and my second (and final ☹) year as your Vice-President Activities!
July was a month of training and conferences for me. Kicking things off with our Officer residential in North Wales to set the tone for our team dynamic, working with our external coach to develop a team mission, vision and values for the year. We also had training to ensure our knowledge on both union and university were up-to-date and we were ready to support our student body, representing their voices.
I then headed off to BUCS conference, where I was elected to be on of their student officers for the year. The conference was very insightful with talks and keynotes from sporting figures across a variety of sports. It was a great week, and I am excited to represent the student voice within BUCS throughout the year. Despite the busy week in Leeds, I managed to make it back just in time to represent the student’s union in the class of 2023 final graduation ceremony of the year!
After a week of catching up with things, I headed back to Leeds this time with the officer team for the NUS Lead and Change. This was a great opportunity that brought officers across the country together to share ideas, campaigns and remind ourselves of the role we have to play this year in the wider student experience! We wrapped up July, supporting our LGBTQ+ community at the Liverpool Pride march <3
August, I focused a lot of my time on the review of our committee training and casual memberships within our clubs. I met with each team involved in casual memberships last year and identified a couple more to discuss a standardised approach across the clubs for the casual membership.
I worked very closely with our Oppurtunites and Development team on restructuring our committee training day to make it more engaging for our student groups. While at BUCS the sport officer from Durham spoke about their restructure to committee training, so I met with him to find out the details behind that and implemented a few ways he altered Durham’s committee training. The two training days went very smoothly (if I do say so myself) and the feedback from committee members was positive as a whole.
I started the busy month that is September in London completing my Movember ambassador training. The training was very insightful, and I left with more knowledge on Men’s health, how to fundraise and of course some freebees!
Then the madness of Freshers began! We hosted 4 focus days at each campus over the week, finishing off with the all-important fresher fair! It is always a busy week, but it was amazing to meet all the new and existing students and talk to them about all the exciting opportunities they can get involved with as a student. We then finished the month with a few accommodation drop-ins, making sure that anyone in halls know who we are and that JMSU is always here for you 😊
After the chaos of freshers, I started to get settled into my role with BUCS – deciding what area I would be working with, attending the relevant meetings and catching up with the other 3 officers to confirm the details of the first sabbatical network meeting.
I also spent a good bit of October finalising the plans for our Movember campaign, deciding events and the groups taking part in Challenge Clodagh! I utilised the Sports and Societies forums (which are open to all students) to get some feedback and input, as to what they would like to see for the month and for any upcoming big events.
October was also the first offical month of the return of Challenge Clodagh! This year we have upped our game and brought the series to YouTube (great for content and promotion, not so much for my embarrassment levels)! So far I have went along to climbing, LGBTQ+ society, Hockey (Men), Rugby Union (Men) and Yoga!
November was been a very exciting, busy and varied month for me, definitely tapping into all aspects of my role! So far, there has been a Trustee Board, BUCS meetings, forums, Sporting events, award planning, meeting with the UUK president.
Movember was one of the best moments of the year, we organised over 10 events ranging from Workshops to Pub quizes, Challenge Clodagh sessions to the big Shave Down. I'm honoured to say we smashed last year's record and LJMU collectively raised over £14,000!
Apart from our Movember campaign, a highlight for me was taking part in the LJMU Honorary fellows' ceremony! I had the pleasure to introduce 5 of the bi-centenary fellows, including Nikita Parris (Manchester United and England footballer), Lousia Flitter (Civil engineering senior manager and LJMU Alumni) and Jamie Christon, Chief executive of Chester zoo!
December will definitely see me planning for term 2, I can’t wait to see what the rest of my final year as a JMSU officer has in store and if anyone has any questions or is curious about the behind the scenes, please get in touch!
