Hi! My name is Josh this year I have had the pleasure of being your VP Activities at our Union of Students and I am re-running for this role.

Despite the challenges this year has presented I want to rerun for this role to further support all our activities and enable all our streams of activities to thrive no matter the circumstance, whether bringing back sport as quickly and as safely as possible through exploring intramural sporting provisions or local leagues, or continuing to support our societies in cultivating a secure engaged online community. No matter the circumstance I will continue to ensure all activities thrive this year!

If elected these are the mandates, I promise to deliver to our Union to improve the student experience:

Accessibility is a core value at the Union of students, and I want to continue this theme by ensuring all our activities are accessible. I will achieve this by introducing a provision for inclusive sport, making the sports centre and its facilities accessible for all students, increased welfare in sport and introduce facilities for wheelchair sports to make sport more inclusive for more students. Along with increased accessibility for sports, I will also audit the online resources used by societies and clubs to ensure our website and its resources are as accessible as possible for all committee members.

Volunteering is a fantastic opportunity for students both in terms of experiences and improving CV’s I want to increase volunteering opportunities for all students through creating ties with both local and national volunteering providers. Sustainability is a key student priority and a key institution aim to reflect this I also want to encourage more sustainable volunteering opportunities such as supporting and reaffirming our ROOTS allotment volunteering opportunity to make this platform secure on a long-term basis so more students can engage and benefit from this provision in the future.

This year the challenges presented by COVID has highlighted the importance of supporting students in these times, I wish to continue my work in tackling student loneliness through activities. I plan to do this through supporting our student activity groups in delivering institution wide events, increasing the visibility of our activities to more students and delivering more events to engage with hard to reach to students at risk of experiencing loneliness. The COVID support hotline developed by the Union of Students and University of Derby is a fantastic resource which I have had the chance to volunteer with, I hope to grow this opportunity to support more students through signposting to our amazing student groups.

 

Through student consultation and my own experiences as a committee member I know the paperwork process of running a committee whether club, society or Student Led Service can be difficult and arduous. I want to ease this by streamlining the process for committees with more support with this for committee, clearer guidelines on forms and increased number of templates available to committee members. This will make all committee paperwork from risk assessments, purchase order forms and room bookings (when available) easier for all committees.