Welcome to Peer Support News.
Welcome to the last Peer Support News of 2019! I hope you have enjoyed your first Semester! The holidays are fast approaching and many of us are looking forward to catching up with family and friends during this time. Unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone. Bear this in mind and offer or signpost support where you can.
Looking Back
Academic and Foreign Language PAL leaders are continuing to do a great job running their group study sessions. Amazing - keep up the good work!
Student Trainers have also been doing a brilliant job with their sessions this Semester and have two remaining before the Christmas holidays: Strees Management &Wellbeing and Study Skills for Success.
It is a great opportunity to support each other and share tips as exams approach, not forgetting to look after yourselves.
Sign up
Email peersupport@bath.ac.uk if you have a success story you would like us to share with the peer support community. Remember if you are running a peer mentoring event or PAL session, take some photos or video and send them on to us. We would love to share these too.
Spotlight
This year, Loughborough Students’ Union PAL Leaders and staff from Universities across Europe to the annual PASS/PAL Leader conference. They came together to share what they do and learn more about this year’s theme, “Finding the Pathways to Success.”
PAL Leaders Thanos Oikonomopoulos and Isabella Harrison-Wan attended and they share their experiences:
Thanos Oikonomopoulos
It was a great opportunity to meet other students from all across the UK as well as other European countries such as Sweden and exchange ideas, tips and opinions on Peer Support/Assistance.
The main activity of the event was the Team challenge. As part of the challenge, we had to create “A successful PASS/PAL/SI guide for future leaders”. As a team, we decided to create 3-minute video featuring 6 different scenarios. 3 correct and 3 wrong. The point of the video was to show what a successful leader should and shouldn’t do.
The conference also featuring a series of interesting, engaging and interactive talks with different speakers from all across Europe with different backgrounds and education. The themes among others were goal setting, diversity and discrimination and successful marketing. Part of the talk were group activities. One of my favorite one was the LEGO block activity. We had to create using LEGO blocks a series of models which showed our selves during university, us as part of the society and us peers support leaders. all these activities helped create a new approach to almost every aspect of life, either professional or personal.
My favorite part of the conference was during the award ceremony on the last day of the event where the winning team was announced. We won the challenge! To be completely honest I wasn’t expecting since all team had done an amazing job fulfilling all creative and innovative “guidelines” of the challenge.
Isabella Harrison-Wan
Looking Forward
Look After Your Mate introduces students to mental health and how to be a supportive friend for someone who is struggling. University life can sometimes be tricky and being able to reach out to friends in a time of need is really important. Friendship can play a key role in helping someone living with, or recovering from difficulties. We know that providing this support to friends isn’t always easy. It can be hard to know what to say and when to say it.
Look After Your Mate is a national Student Minds campaign designed to give you all the information needed to support friends experiencing mental health difficulties whilst looking after your own wellbeing.
There are two training sessions in December:
Wednesday 4th December – 14:15 -17:15
Wednesday 11th December – 14:15 -17:15
Flo’s café
Back in February, the SU took over the café in the Virgil Building.
The SU want to replicate the sense of community in the same way as Campus down at Flo's so we need your help to decide how the space should be used.
Please fill in the survey now for a chance to win a £20 Amazon voucher - the survey closes on the 6th December. Good Luck!
Sign up
Volunteer of the month
Chemistry PAL Leeders Ella, Nicola, David have been nominated Volunteers of the Month. They have done an incredible job so far this year, planning and facilitating well thought out and engaging activities to support their attendees. They have also made their sessions more accessible for Natural Science, helping to better support students on this course as well. You are all stars!
Each month we are going to name a Peer Support volunteer or group of volunteers who have gone above and beyond, deserving some extra recognition for their efforts!
If you would like to nominate a volunteer or group of volunteers for our first award, you can do so by emailing peersupport@bath.ac.uk before 25 January stating your nominee(s) and why you think they deserve recognition.
Have a great December and we wish you some time to relax and rest during the holidays!