The week of the 11th October didn't start too well, as Unite had to cancel their meeting with myself and Veronica and Tom from Liverpool Guild and Plymouth Uni. We were supposed to be meeting them to talk about student representation in Unite Halls. However, the meeting went ahead anyway as we thought it was important to raise the issues, and we've drafted a plan for how student representation could work, which we're going to present to Unite late in November.

Tuesday I spent in the office, and meeting Harvey from the Portman Group to plan my presentation on young people and alcohol that I'm giving to a bunch of MEPs and alcohol campaigners next week. I've also been working on my presentation on co-op housing and my speech on students and communities.

Wednesday was Countdown 2015 Day, and I attended a campaigning event in Parliament designed to raise awareness of the 529,000 women who die every year in pregnancy and childbirth who wouldn't die if they had access to basic medical care and equipment. The campaign is really important to me, and it's something I've been working closely on with Sarah from Interact, who many of you may have met at Summer Training. To find out more go to www.interactworldwide.org

Thursday, I put the finishing touches on my co-op housing presentation, and then went down to a posh conference centre in regents park to give it. It went well and I got to meet lots of people interested in finding innovative solutions the problems in student accommodation.

Friday was UUK. Kat and I went to meet them to discuss a number of issues, and it was a really good opportunity to raise some of our concerns about student accommodation. Unfortunately, they seemed less positive about the new Halls Code of Standards than we'd hoped. Given that it's being launched at their offices and they've had a seat on the management cttee you'd think they'd be happy to support it. We're hopefully going to meet them again soon to get to the bottom of the issue.

And on Sunday I went along to LGB Cttee, which was good and passed some positive policy, but I was quite poorly so had to go home half way through.

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/helensymons/269983.aspx