After months of careful and dedicated planning, the CCSU team, Welcome Crew and Club Chemistry pulled off a brilliant two weeks of Freshers’ madness. We’ve all worked so hard, many of us not having a single day off in two weeks, which has been challenging but hugely rewarding when you see first-hand how well the Freshers’ have settled in. My body still hurts from the inflatable assault course we had for (Education & Welfare) Hanna’s welfare day. It’s worth it though because I beat our new intern Ryan and one of my old lecturers which was rather amusing!

Another notable highlight for me has to be Freshers’ Fayre - after years of sports teams dominating this event it was so refreshing to witness so many societies recruiting newbies with such enthusiasm and passion. I think this is the year for societies!

Raise and Give (RaG) is also going to be massive this year as our current fundraising officer, Dan Brasier, and one of our awesome Welcome Crew members, Zoe Harrison, managed to get a staggering 416 signatures of interest for fundraising at the Fayre.

This is what converts the exhaustion of the past few months into excitement for what’s to come. We have a whole new cohort of students ready to be involved in Students' Union activities and I can’t wait for all our up-coming plans to fall into place.

From a Student Activities perspective, I’m looking forward to:

• Kitting out the new media suite so our newly recruited student media team can get UNIfied and CCTV back off the ground

• Organising the first ever Student Activities Awards ceremony

• Recruiting the Student Activities Executive Committee (formally known as the Societies Exec Committee, altered to be more inclusive and representative of RaG and student media as well, rather than solely societies)

• Helping our current RaG officer recruit a solid RaG team, which we’re going to need for the numerous fundraising events planned for the year!

• Recruiting students for six fundraising challenges including Mount Kilimanjaro and a marathon in Barcelona.

• Making the donation bins for Books2Africa and British Heart Foundation more visible and therefore more successful!

• Committing to visiting Medway and Broadstairs at least once a month in order to establish more student activities at all campuses

Watch this space to read how these exciting things are achieved!

Thanks

Sophie

President (Student Actvities)