Captain Planet

Well, the new Societies Committee for 08/09 was elected a week and a half ago and the New Activities Officer 2008/2009 was elected on the same night. Congratulations Matt Fox!

Its pretty busy at the moment with the Activities awards coming up and if you're interested the shortlist has just been announced...

http://www.shef.ac.uk/union/activities-and-sport/societies/society-awards.php

The event itself will be on 13th May in University House and will be amazing! I’ll update how great it was after its all over, but for now I thought I'd better squeeze a blog out before the end of the month, so here's what I've been doing since my last update.

The Societies Information booklet that I have been working on this year has finally started to come together, it should now be ready for September 08 Hurrah!

From the Focus Groups we held before Christmas we realised that Societies Councils weren’t very effective and therefore we have scrapped one of them (potentially two next year) and introduced more specific training sessions for Chairs, Treasurers and Events Planning etc. This has proved a success and will be continued.

Issues involving University room bookings have mainly been resolved across the University, there are still some outstanding issues with bookings of the Food Court in particular to do with double bookings and porters kicking societies out early but as this is the first year the room is being used for societies I have been assured these are just temporary teething problems.

The Kiosks in the Source and Gallery have been changed and improved! You can now access some programs but most importantly listen to SURE Radio and watch YouTube. Now it is similar to a Windows desktop and easy to log out.

RAG Week is happening next week 2-9th May. Its 'back-to-basics' this year for RAG as the week is filled with loads of fun activities raising money for charity. There are some classics from the days of yore like a Bouncy castle and a Candyfloss stall.
Rumour has it that there may be a Tony Hadley sing-along Flashmob at one point during the week (check out YouTube) but keep it under your hat.

The Summer Volunteering project is all starting to come together now and it’s starting to get really exciting! Mark Willoughby has been doing the rounds with important University and Local types who have committed time and support to this project and both the Sheffield Volunteering Board and the Union's Volunteering Committee are in full support. After much discussion, the event is now called ‘Summer Volidays’ you know like Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday… but for Volunteering… Summer Voliday? It is a terrible pun I know, but it grows on you.

If you want to get involved in promoting 'Summer Volidays' then join our facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16622094988 basically its gonna be immense!

The last of the Working Committees AGM’s should be this week and there will be a training day held for all new committee members on Saturday 10th May. I've been nominated the co-ordinator so thats what I'm distracting myself away from doing now to write this blog.

Faith Matters Week happened last week. The question that was explored all week was ‘Does Faith Really Matter?’ It was pretty good though it couldn't be compared to last year with the amazing World Peace event, but maybe thats a project for next year...

And finally, you may be wondering why I started this blog with Captain Planet. Well, after my last blog we had the Ethical and Environmental Knowledge Week (EEK Week) loads of people took part in the events that went on throughout the week and a packed room for “Stuff’t Olives Green” that finished the week off with a funk. The theme of the week was Monsters (i.e. the poverty monster, exploitation monster etc.) which was awesome however that meant that much to my dissapointment a ‘Captain Planet’ week to encourage more Global Stewardship didn't happen, no-one was even up for dressing up for it.

So here's my point - Captain Planet was amazing at the time, and still is. There were so many good messages and infact pretty similar to our own student Union key messages as well. Take for instance the kids - Kwame (he had the Earth ring), Wheeler (Fire), Linka (Wind), Gi (Water) - and the additional power of Ma-Ti's Heart ring. All of them were from different continents, I mean if that isn't diversity, womens rights, internationalism, black representation, and all on an environmental and ethical agenda I dont know what is. Personally I think Captain Planet should be the Union mascot... but I wouldn't stop there, I'd go as far to say that our Union should be re-named 'Captain Planet' as he represents us so well. My main justification for this came from the theme tune, as if its true we'll definately win the Gold Sound Impact award for most environmentally friendly student Union next year.

'Captain Planet, he's our hero, he's gonna take pollution down to zero'

...the blue body paint from eBay should be arriving tomorrow.