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Rhiannon Horsley
Rhiannon Horsley is member of the People & Planet Management Committee and is the outgoing President of Reading Students Union.
She has a wealth of experience dealing with student finance issues and is here now to offer you some hot tips on how to go about ensuring that your Student Union helps to pay for your Summer Gathering 2009 place.
Take it away Rhiannon!
The Summer Gathering is exactly the sort of event that Student Unions like to help fund so I’d definitely encourage students across the network to sign up for an invoice when booking their place. Rhiannon Horsley - Outgoing President, Reading Students Union
Seven steps to success!
1.
Get in touch with the relevant Student Officer/Sabbatical Officer. If you don’t already know them then make the effort to build a good relationship. If you’re nice to them they’ll be much more likely to support you with funding.
2. Sabbatical Officers can be very busy and may be on their way somewhere, have a deadline to meet or be dealing with something else. If they seem busy try and make an appointment to talk to them on another occasion - you don’t want them to feel rushed or hassled which might make them say ‘no’ just so they can get on with other work.
3. Get in touch with them before your meeting, introduce yourself, and explain why you want to meet them, maybe send them a link to the People & Planet web page so they can get an idea of what P&P is about before you talk to them.
4. Highlight the benefits that you will gain from going to the Summer Gathering, talk about transferable skills, becoming more employable, that you want to get more students involved in your society.
5. Take time over the next year to build the relationship with the sabbatical team, help them out with their campaigns, invite them to your events and get to know them a bit more.
6. If your Sabbatical Officer can’t help you ask if they know if there is anyone/thing else that could help. They might know about other people who can or about other pots of money available to you.
7. If there isn’t any money available for this year talk to your Sabbatical Officer about giving you a bigger budget next year so you can afford to send students then.
People & Planet have made it really easy for you to claim the costs of the Summer Gathering through your SU and can help with any queries you have about it too.
- Find out more by visiting the booking page
- Email the Summer Gathering Team for more advice
- Download the Summer Gathering funding letter to take to your SU
