After Student Council this week it became clear that students often don't know what sabbatical officers do so I am going to try my best to write a blog every week to let you know what i've been up to and add 'a day in the life of a sabb' type entries too! So here it goes!.....

This week I have been working on the stress management campaign that I will be running when students come back from the holidays. This has included meetings with University services and also compiling information on how best to cope with exam and coursework stress to put into leaflets to give to as many students as possible.

I have also had a few Union meetings where we discuss and agree on items such as finance, the environment and charity registration.

I had a meeting with the Student Finance Centre about our joint campaign in February, LOAD£D, which is there to help you with managing your money and also to help with issues surrounding money such as housing, getting a job and the tax man!

Safer Students is a University initiative which is run in conjunction with UPSU and aims to get saftey messages accross to all students. In our meeting this week we discussed how to make students aware of tips on how to leave your house over the Christmas holidays to try and reduce the likelihood of burglaries. We also discussed the new messages that we would like to tell students about next year which looks set to include an alcohol safety campaign.

I have also been chatting to RAG and VIP about all their lovely events that have happened in the last few weeks and feeding back on what was great and what we can improve for next time. I will write a separate blog about all of the hard work and lovely events that both RAG and VIP have done so far this year!

The Sound Impact Award appliaction is due in next week so myself and other members of staff have been working hard to make sure our Union is as environmentally friendly as possible. This has included me working today on finding an alternative water dispenser as these often have a high carbon footprint, and have found one which is looking very positive, yay! This week we have also managed to solve the issue of not having anywhere to recycle our toner carteridges, we have now found a recycling centre that will take them, which is great!

I still have a few meetings left for the rest of the week but will tell you about them in my next blog. Hope this has given you a bit of an idea about what I do! If you are off home for the holidays have a very merry Christmas!

Beth x

Vice President Welfare and Volunteering