JCR Welfare

This year the welfare team have run some great campaigns. Please take a look at the pieces below from the JCR's Welfare Officers Becky Hartley and Daniel Kostick.

Becky - Female Welfare Officer

When Daniel and I both ran for welfare, we had no idea what we were signing up for and that we would be at the core of welfare in the middle of a pandemic. Despite this, we both went into Freshers Week excited but a tiny bit nervous. Move-in day was the highlight for both of us. We both had the opportunity to become familiar faces alongside carrying in the thousands of house plants, desk lamps and suitcases!

Shortly after Freshers Week, we hosted our first College Parent’s event –the Ring of Ice! The game is an adapted version of a popular party game which was designed to get to know your College parents and children and we received wonderful feedback that it was a great success. After this, we introduced our Mental Health Awareness Campaign which looked at anxiety, imposter syndrome, COVID anxiety, depression and looking out for others. We both had personal ties to this, and felt it was extremely important given the rising regulations with the pandemic to provide information and signposting about mental health and be as transparent as possible. To facilitate this, we hosted our ‘dial a doughnut’ event where students could message us with a mental health questions and we responded with signposting an information [and a free doughnut as a thank you!]. The event was an amazing success and we answered almost 200 questions!

Overall, I personally feel we’ve had an extremely successful start to the term and I’m so excited to host future campaigns and events. Welfare is so critical currently and I’m so thankful to be apart of it and helping others –here’s to Epiphany Term!

Dan - Male Welfare Officer

Despite being kept apart by COVID-19 I am glad Becky and I have managed to bring the College together (at least virtually) through two ‘events’: ‘Who Killed Jack Judge?’ a murder mystery evening (with the help of our lovely JCR) and the ‘Snow Shuffle’, which matched students who had similar interests. In general, collaboration has been a big part of Welfare this year with the housing campaign and the launch of Snow’s very own ‘Find a Housemate’ group. We owe some of the campaign's success to the support of the SU and our very own SU Officer (Alex Walker). It is also reassuring to see that house signing has reduced so far this year. The message is being heard!

Over ‘Lockdown 2.0’ we ran a campaign with tips on how to boost your welfare be it through exercise, sleep or applying 'implementation intentions'. Moreover, we brought back the popular JCR Instagram takeovers showing an insight into the different lives we all lead as JCR officers. Hopefully going forward Becky and I will be able to keep bringing the College together again for Christmas, and future campaigns which include Sexual Health and Guidance, Valentines’ Self-Love and Body Positivity.