That's a wrap!

And so ends another university year (apart from pukey exams). Where does the time go?! I swear I was only a fresher last week...and in a couple of months I, and many other UNICEF-ers are graduating. Gulp.

But what a year it has been. We have:

Cake-saled ourselves to success, TWICE!

Modellin'

Bucket shaken at Fab 4 TIMES!

Classic Fab

Run a hilarious Comedy Night!

And hosted the rather amazing La Soiree des Enfants!

FOOD

And much more! All thanks to all the UNICEF members and anyone gave money, we raised a whopping £1519.75 this year for Syria, Gaza, South Sudan and the Ebola crisis! That is a figure to be seriously proud of guys - big well done to every single on of you.

The biggest thanks go out to Cathrine, Tom, Krisna, Andra & Hayley for being a GR8 committee! Thanks for creating a society where I, and many others have felt welcomed and part of a greater cause! Also, thanks to Will for taking some brill pictures over the year to showcase all the brill things we have done.

Good luck to Leonie, Ruth, Sam, Krisna & Gina who are taking the helm next year, I am sure you guys will do fantastically!

And finally, good luck to all of you in your exams...and in life! It has been a pleasure blogging for UNICEF on Campus this year, and being a part of a such a lovely, wonderful society.

Over and out xo

La Soiree des Enfants!

So about a week ago, the biggest event of the UNICEF on Campus calendar took place. And what an event it was!

La Soiree des Enfants, an evening for Syria was put on in the Underground to raise money for the #NoLostGeneration campaign that UNICEF are currently running. We had snacks (always a win) and tables, and a huge variety of class acts that kindly performed.

Thank you very much to:

The Birmingham Footnotes Society! – for giving us some good belly laughs;

Abracapella! – who were brave and kind enough to give us their debut performance as a group! You were fab!

Dr Nicholas Lemay-Herbert! – for giving an interesting and thought-provoking on aid dependency and the work he does in Haiti;

And finally, Little Dynamite! – for rounding off the show with a bang with some great classics that the audience loved. Ya always gotta finish with Wonderwall.

A few other thank yous that I believe are in order:

To Leonie & Sam, for running a most excellent raffle that was NOT rigged…

Unicef member

Unicef member

Unicef member

NON-UNICEF MEMBER HOORAY

To the other UNICEF members who have helped with the planning leading up to the event, as well as helping do the uber fun jobs of setting up and cleaning up afterwards...

To ALL the committee (Andra, Krisna, Hayley, Tom & Cathrine) who basically made the event the success it was through all your hard work! You guys are SICK...

And finally, to everybody who came and supported a great cause, thank you! By the sounds of one rowdy table during the final speeches (I didn't know them I promise), you enjoyed yourselves, which is great. We raised £514.15 for the children of Syria – WOO YEAH!

To round off, here are some of my fave pics from the night…enjoy :)

Tom posing again  #shock

UNICEF updates!

2015 is only a month old, and for UNICEF on Campus it's been a busy one!

Firstly, WE HAD ANOTHER CAKE SALE! And guess what - we raised even more than we did last time! £184.46!!! Thank you to everyone who baked cakes and helped sell them to help the children of Syria in the cold winter over there. Below are some of my favourite pictures that our in-house photographer Will took:

An array of what was on offer! YUM

Tom loves cake.

The people love their cake!

Not only have we been baking our socks off - we've been planning our next big event too! On Friday 27th February is our Fundraiser, and it promises to be a fabulous evening. More details to come soon!

Til then, look out for some of us at good ol' Fab on the 7th Feb - be sure to pop in some pennies to go towards sending aid out to children in South Sudan!

Universal Children's Day

Happy Belated Universal Children's Day!!

Universal Children's Day was on Thursday 20th November, and nicely coincided with our latest meeting. For anyone that is not a UNICEF on Campus member, we meet every other Thursday to plan events, discuss issues children are facing around the world, and have a general chinwag! This time, we celebrated by learning about Universal Children's Day.

Universal Children's Day marks the day that the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child & the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1959 and 1989 respectively (yes, it is the 25th anniversary for the beady eyed amongst you!). Although this was obviously a great event, it reminds us that there is still so much to be done around the world for children everywhere.

I think it shocked me most to learn that only 3 UN member nations have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child - Somalia, South Sudan and the good ol' United States of America. There are many reasons for this; including the fact that under 18s can currently be jailed for life without parole, that does not fit in with the treaty. Also, apparently it undermines the authority of parents, especially on sexual and religious education, despite one part of the treaty stating that children should 'grown up in the care and under responsibility of their parents'. I'll let you decide what you think about that. This is an interesting article on the subject: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/10/economist-explains-2

At our meeting, we took photos holding up what issues currently affecting children we felt were most important - here are a selection.

 Child Rights

 Education

 Water

Health

As ever - thank you for reading! Also, here is the link to the speech we watched by the inspiring 12 year old Adora Svitak: http://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitak

Comedy Night!

Oh what a night…on Friday 14^th November UNICEF on Campus and the Birmingham Footnotes Comedy Society held a joint venture that combined both comedy and charity!

Laughs-a-plenty could be heard from the Beorma Bar as 6 comedians entertained a big crowd, all to fundraise for relief efforts against the Ebola outbreak. There will be an upcoming blog post about the current situation on Ebola, so don’t miss it!

Well done to Ludo Cinelli, our charismatic compere, and also to performers Chris Austin, Kola Adegbola, Richard Baker, Sam Arrowsmith, David Ayland, Bobbie-Ann Jones and Benedict Churchus for really tickling us, everyone was genuinely really funny! There’s always that awkward moment when you worry whether comedians are going actually be funny or not, but thankfully you guys made us all snort, a lot.

Ludo, our compere

Kola, one of the fab comedians

Thank yous go out to all the performers mentioned, everyone who bought a ticket, Ruth and Leonie for buying the snacks (a v. important job) and the UNICEF committee for making it all happen!

All together now…FUCK EBOLA!

Emergency Plan

At our last meeting, UNICEF on campus UoB came up with our emergency plan!

When emergencies strike, we desperately need money to get out fast to those in need. Therefore we need to be ready to raise the essential funds as soon as we hear word of a breaking emergency. We plan to ensure that: 
- We have a system in place to spread the word fast to our university community.
- We are the first society on campus visibly fundraising.
- UNICEF is the first charity the public sees and responds to in an emergency.

 And this is what we came up with! 

Timeline	Action	UNICEF to provide
Day 1 – emergency strikes	-          UNICEF on campus society meeting -          Create a # for twitter and Facebook -          Set up a text to give code -          Generate an awareness of the disaster on social media, post in society and fresher’s groups -          Ask redbrick (campus newspaper) to run an article about the emergency and planned fundraising events	Initial statistics and fundraising goal
Day 2	-          Bucket shake on campus -          Bucket shake in the city centre – tell people about the emergency -          Lecture shout outs -          Put posters up around campus	Give us a pdf A3 poster summarising emergency, what UNICEF is doing to help and how people can donate
Day 3	-          Bake cakes (YES MORE CAKES!) -          Bag packing in Harborne – M&S or Sainsbury’s	Pdf of a flyer summarising emergency which we can print off and give out to people
Day 4	-          Bake sale -          Pub quiz -          Create a UNICEF on campus video update -          Ask local press to get involved	Have some pub quiz questions based on the emergency or on UNICEF in general
Day 5	-          Hopefully there will be an online video/celebrity video which we can share to increase social media awareness -          Obstacle course, 3-legged race, kids games on campus. Pay per go.	Email update on which celebrity UNICEF ambassadors are  involved and what the social media plan is
Day 6	-          Flash mob on campus -          Sports tournament: pay per team or per person and have a prize (donated for free) for the winner, with potential to add a charity auction.	Ask any companies that you work with to donate prizes for raffles, tournaments etc.
Day 7	-          Fundraiser event: comedy night, talent show, karaoke night -          UNICEF dinner: members cook a meal for friends who donate money to UNICEF Society dinner to recount how the weeks fundraising has gone	A thank you email summarising what all the UNICEF on campus groups have done and how much UNICEF has raised.

Buzzing for when I can show my inner Beyonce at the karaoke night...

Well done to everyone who attended the meeting and contributed ideas, I think we are well set up to respond effectively to a crisis. Let's just hope we won't need it.

Lets Get Quizzical

On Monday was our first social of the year - and we decided to embark on the great and noble quest that is winning The Soak pub quiz!

About 3 teams pledged their allegiance to the cause of winning the quiz, with their promise of donating the winnings to UNICEF if the quest proved successful. Little did we know how challenging our quest would be...

The quiz was Halloween themed, it being the week leading up to Halloween and all. And oh my god, it was so hard! Unless you had a superior knowledge of horror films and creepy trivia (I am not about that life), it was bloody difficult. Only one team ended up staying til the end (YOU GO QUIZTICAL!) - a valiant effort.

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I hope everyone had fun regardless, and we'll see you at the next social!