Bangor SU wins Community Relations Award

 Bangor Students’ Union has been awarded the ‘NUS Wales Award for Community Relations’ at the NUS Wales Conference in Gregynog, beating all other Student associations in Wales for the prize, as a result of the myriad of activity run by Bangor SU in and alongside the local community.

 Over the past year, Bangor SU has both held and supported a number of local events such as the World Aids Day Service in Bangor Cathedral; a reclaim the night march around the city and also supported the Conwy Food Festival by encouraging our student societies to take part in the Medieval-themed day out. The Medieval Re-enactment Society was a huge hit and has been invited back next year.

 The Union also runs Student Volunteering Bangor, which supports over 150 students volunteering in the local community, ranging from projects such as the ‘Beach Clean Project’ and ‘Sbectrwm’, where the students work with children with learning disabilities. This year has also seen new projects establish too, such as running social events for the residents of a local bail hostel. Student volunteering is set to grow exponentially over the next 12 months as the University and SU are committed to increasing the opportunities for Bangor’s students to gain valuable volunteering.

 The SU’s end of term rubbish survival campaign goes from strength to strength and works hand in hand with the SVB’s ‘Big Give’ project; aiming to help students make a positive contribution to the city, and be respectful and tidy tenants, whilst the Big Give project collects unwanted end-of-year student items and donates them to local charity shops. Additionally this year, Bangor SU also ran a ‘street harassment’ campaign to further highlight problems of safety (not only student safety) within the city, which received good local press coverage.

 A final factor in Bangor receiving the award was the large number of environmental initiatives which have benefitted the local environment as well as the campus. The project to help reduce the decline of the bumble bee has seen thousands of wild flowers planted in the Bangor area, whilst the Union continues to constantly look to reduce student and University waste.

 Rich Gorman, Vice President, Societies & Community said:

 “We’re delighted that our hard work has paid off. We’ve ha d an exceptionally busy year, both holding and supporting a number of local events and implementing our own initiatives. We hope that parts of the community feel the benefit of having students in and around the city.”

Publication date: 17 April 2012