Union Development

Richard worked with KCLSU Sports Staff and the Sports Committee to introduce a charity run during Welcome Week 2018. An event open to everyone, but particularly for fresher’s, it offered a great, inclusive opportunity for students to come together, have fun and get to know each other in a challenging environment. Richard said: "Over £10,000 was raised from the run and lessons learned for how to organise it more easily in years to come, and I gained very useful event management experience. The process is great way for students to get convert ideas into reality and for the union to hear what students want and help them make it happen."

This initiative resulted in KCLSU’s first Doggy de-stress day and took place during exam time. Nearly 300 students turned up to meet the pups, and Doggy de-stress is now be a much-anticipated regular event. "I came up with the idea of King's puppy therapy days after seeing friends from different universities attend ones and realizing that King's didn't offer them yet. I'm a huge dog person and have my own husky, Nico, at home, so the idea of bringing dogs onto campus for students to pet seemed fun. We timed the first one to coincide with exam season in order to provide a cute opportunity to destress. Seeing the long line of excited students on the day made all the work put in worth it - plus, we were able to raise a tonne of money for a local rescue charity and the dogs really enjoyed all the attention too!"

Ben put forward the idea to hold events where students could come together and reflect on things that were worrying them or discuss particular aspects of their own wellbeing. He worked with the Welfare Committee and KCLSU Wellbeing Coordinator, Julia, to make two of these events happen last year! Students gathered, with pizza, to be open and vulnerable together and change the culture around mental health and wellbeing. They were very successful events and it was great to have students leading each other in such important discussions about mental health.

Charlotte proposed that students needed better access to the storage site in the West Wing. She worked with sports staff to resolve the issues and now activity groups have access to the site out of hours and more space has been allocated to sports storage.

Elizabeth pointed out that a lot of events exclude those with families and it can be as simple as starting events earlier to make student parents feel more part of the student community. Students have worked with KCLSU staff to make sure events are family friendly – for example, there was a room for parents and children at the Welcome Fair.