It’s been a busy summer, and now that it is slowly coming to a close here is exactly what I have been up to over the past 3 months.

In June I attended a Community Cohesion FE event at NIACE on behalf on NUS to hear Bill Rammell’s response to the sector. I met with the all-parliamentary committee against anti-Semitism and attended some higher education fairs in secondary schools.

In July we started off with the NEC training residential in Warwick, and then a week later I was attending advanced FE Leadership in Bridgewater. I went to the launch of a new think tank, the European Institute for Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism, and beat UUK in rounders all on behalf of the student movement. Meanwhile I collated and finished the first publication for the NUS ARAF campaign, a religious guidebook for students' unions that will be downloadable from the new website and available in print by the end of the year.

August came along and the Welfare and ARAF campaign meetings kicked off, I attended developing your members in Bristol, giving a workshop of faith societies, and a Student in the Community training event in Leeds with Unipol. I had meetings with WAMANUS ARAF, three faith forum for FE campaigns launch and went to the Aegis Students AGM. Towards the end of the month I was at a round table discussion on students in the community with representatives from around the UK and went to the BIG WELSH ONE giving workshops on No Platform.

I’m really active to make sure that the ARAF campaign is a huge success this year. That will be measured by how useful a resource it can become to student unions by the end of the year and how powerfully it campaigns on anti-racism and anti-fascism issues. We are working with WAMANUS at the moment gearing up for the mayoral elections in Stoke.

It’s been a busy but productive summer and now freshers’ looms large on the horizon!!

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