Welcome to the Amnesty International society for students at Birmingham City University (née UCE).
Amnesty International is a global organisation that works to protect people's human rights, and fights for the release of prisoners of conscience. For more information about their work, click on the 'About Amnesty' link at the top of this page.
BCU:AI is planning a major event in Bar 42, sometime in May. So far, the plan is to have a pyjama party including pillow fight, truth or dare, a cake sale and a prize raffle. The event will take place on either Thursday 14th or a Friday in early May (depending on the bar's availability).
You can help in many ways:
All profit we raise will be going directly to Amnesty International UK.
In our January meeting, we decided upon a committee. We now have Kirat Raj and Cesca Berlen as General Secretaries, and Joel Brackenbury as Treasurer.
We are planning on holding a social event, in which we shall go to the Odeon in Birmingham city centre to see Valkyrie. This will be on Wednesday 28th January. You can meet us either at 7pm in Hare of the Dog, which is a pub on Franchise Street, Perry Barr, or outside the Odeon at 7.30pm.
If you'd like to know more information about this film, click here.
Our next meeting will be on Monday 1st December in Bar 42 at 7pm
This meeting will focus on Amnesty's 'Greeting Cards Campaign'; an annual event in which members of Amnesty International send greeting cards to illegally held prisoners and their families. We'll be making our own cards using card, glue, glitter, paint and potato stamping... and any other materials I can get my hands on! Throughout the first two weeks of December, we'll be asking people to sign a card and donate towards the postage. Hopefully we can organise stalls on various days at various campuses. Check back for more information on this!
Our last meeting was on Monday 3rd November, and we managed to get a further 2 members, bringing our official number up to 31!
As well as this, the annual Student Conference took place from 7th- 9th November. Unfortunately, no representative from BCU was able to attend, but please check the Amnesty website for all the news and gossip!
Our first meeting was held in October, and we managed to get another 7 new members, bringing the society's total up to 29. Not bad! We discussed the different campaigns, and talked about what everyone knew or didn't know about Amnesty's work.
Thanks to everyone who came over to chat at the Freshers' Fayre- it was good to meet so many new people, especially seeing as we now have a fairly long mailing list and at least 20 paid members. So we're officially a society! Yay! I'll be sending out a group email soon, but first I need to copy all of your email addresses onto my computer. A fun evening ahead! Hopefully everyone had their questions answered, and managed to pick up a leaflet about the next meetings. Please bear in mind that these are only provisional dates- I have more events planned, but I couldn't fit everything onto the sheet! Check out the events page for more information about upcoming activities.
Our next meeting will be on Monday 6th October at 7pm in Bar 42.
I hope to see you all there!
BCU:AI will be hosting a stall at this year's Freshers' Fayre, taking place outside Bar 42 at the City North campus (Perry Barr). The fayre will take place on Wednesday 24th September between 10am and 4pm.
Come along and have a chat if you're interested in knowing more about Amnesty International's work or if you're thinking of joining the society. There will be plenty of information to take away, so there's no pressure to make a decision on the spot. We're kind like that, you see!
If anyone is interested in helping to run the stall, please email me. You don't need to be a member of the society to help out!
I'm in the process of updating everything, ready for the new term. I'm slowly but surely getting this site up and running, trying to iron out any kinks in the design. I've also edited the information on the union's society page (see the union website) and updated the Facebook group
We had a meeting to decide the focus for next term's campaign. We decided to look at the Burma campaign which is featured in this month's Amnesty magazine (which I have loads of if anyone wants one). There's also information about it on their website.
