Every year, our Sabbatical Officer team and a number of our dedicated staff go to the NUS Students' Union Conference. We meet Sabbatical Officers and staff from other Students’ Unions across the country and get to share our ideas and perfect our policies. Students' Unions are at their best when they unite and think about the bigger picture. This is what this conference allows us to do. 

This year, I went to a total of ten workshops, ranging from sessions about SU Democracy to the Black Attainment Gap. Each of these workshops were very useful in planning for the year ahead.  
 
The 'Doing Democracy Differently' workshop was an example of just that such of these. Staff from the National Institute of Apprentices (NIA) detailed how their democratic structures work. This year, one of my commitments is to review our democratic structures and processes and to implement any changes by October 2018. The NIA’s structures focused on student consensus decision-making delegation. 
 
Ali Milani, our Vice-President for Union Development and NUS staff, delivered the session on TOTUM, the new NUS Extra card system. The plan from them is to move it online through an app, still having physical copies on request, but enabling students to do a lot more. The change will see students being able to join societies and sports clubs at their SU, vote in elections, buy tickets for events and much more in early 2019! This will also enable Students' Unions and NUS to have a more personal and direct connection our students. Some raised concerns over the speed of the change, however it was agreed the change is positive overall and will mean NUS will be viewed as much more than just a card. 
 
I also attended a workshop on developing grassroots activists on our campuses. There is not a shortage of campaigns to be ran on our campuses but there is a shortage of activists. Our Campaigns Coordinator at Salford has maintained a specific pot of funds for students to use for grassroots campaigns, a commendable service we offer, however not many students are using this. As such, one of the questions we explored was 'what are the barriers to grassroots campaigning that SU’s need to be focusing on?’. This is not something specific to Salford but an issue across many Students' Unions. Working together was useful in identifying the barriers to student activism and allowed us to generate ideas on how to overcome them. 

The 'Black Attainment Gap' session delivered by Ilyas Nagdee, the NUS Black Students Officer, was extremely popular. Salford University has committed to the Race Equity Charter and we at the SU are commissioning work around how we can close the Black Attainment Gap. Hearing what programmes work well was useful and hopefully we'll be able to implement some of the good work that's being carried out by other Students' Unions in the coming year.
 
Our final session was on 'Challenging Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence'. Tackling sexual harassment and assault is something the Sabbatical Officer team are passionate about. It was useful to hear from other SU’s about their challenges in tackling sexual violence. I'm incredibly keen to run a Union/University campaign on safety in 2018, with specific areas covering sexual harassment and assault. I think if the Sabbatical Officer team took this on as a joint priority it would be incredibly successful in educating students but also empowering victims to come forward. 
 
To cap the event off, we won the Relationships & Partnerships NUS Award for our LGBTQ+ campaigning in the local community! Specific thanks goes out to our amazing Campaigns Coordinator, Jessica Goldstone, who has worked incredibly hard over the last few years in establishing long-term connections and relationships within the community. 
 
These conferences are a way for us to develop and grow our manifesto points but also a way for a team to bond. I'm looking forward to working with Famous, Evie, Emily, Kobby and Ed in the upcoming year. Together we will campaign for students and support them through empowerment and liberation. 
 
If you have any questions or would like to know something more specific, please do get in touch at j.lyons1@Salford.ac.uk’