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Newsletter 2014-07-12: Pride Glasgow! Volunteer Opportunities and Coming Up

Hello and welcome to another summertime newsletter. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Lots to get through this week again!

First and foremost, next week is Glasgow Pride! Once again GU Amnesty intend to go along and join in the march and we may have a small social gathering thereafter. Hope to see everyone, including our friends from Glasgow West and possibly even Ayr there! There are a number of interesting things coming up as well as a whole host of pretty dandy volunteer opportunities. Interested? I am, so read on!

Saturday 19th July: Pride Glasgow!

It’s that time of year again. Get out your best marching boots and come along and join us for a day of celebration of identity. If you haven’t been before I would strongly urge you to come along. All are welcome, the atmosphere is very friendly. I wasn’t able to make the event last year, but I went to the one before that and it was definitely a highlight of my summer.

We’re going to march in the parade. This year it starts from Clyde Place (see map), and initially over the George V bridge. The assembly time is 9:30 AM, and the destination is the King Street Car Park at 11:30.

Start:

Our plan is to meet up outside Bridge Street Subway at 9:15.

Please get in touch via FB, Twitter or the website if you’re running late! Some folks have expressed an interest in joining us afterwards; thats fab too- we’ll probably head to a park or cafe or similar depending on the weather once the march has wound up. You can either meet us at King St Car Park, where we’l be until 12 at least, or get in touch as above and meet us at the social.

Photos from two years back.
One of the photos from Pride 2012

For those who can’t join us on the day, you could tweet your support (@guamnesty using the hashtag #glasgowpride. Include us in the tweets so we can retweet you!

Amnesty UK Volunteering Opportunities

With the Commonwealth Games nearly upon us and the Edinburgh Festival following hot on its heels, there are volunteering opportunities for both! If you fancy helping out, have a look and see if any of the following interest you:

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/amnesty-commonwealth-ambassadors

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/amnesty-edinburgh-festival-ambassadors

Please note that the closing date for the Commonwealth Ambassadors and Edinburgh Festival Ambassadors is this Monday (14th July), so get your skates on if you want to take part!

If you’re in Edinburgh and don’t mind the commute, there are opportunities to help out at the Scotland Office:

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/administrator-volunteer

These close next Monday (21st July).

Volunteering Opportunity with Philanthrobeats

From our friends over at the ever-groovy Philanthrobeats, Sarah Crowe got in touch to let us know about a really positive volunteering opportunity:

Philanthrobeats are offering one-to-one music classes for asylum seeker/refugee children
and we are looking for volunteers! Philanthrobeats are launching
one-to-one music classes with asylum seeker and refugee children. If any skilled
musicians out there want to get involved, take a look at the info on our website where you
can also find the volunteer application form.

http://philanthrobeats.org.uk/music-classes/

It’s worth keeping an eye on PB’s website (http://philanthrobeats.org.uk/) for their upcoming events.

AIUK Student Survey

A quick word from Rachel Statham from the STAN committee:

Hello Scottish Activists,

Please take a few minutes to fill out our AIUK student survey and give a little feedback
on what your Student Action Network Committee can do to help improve the student
activist experience –
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Jc2KR6Cc%2bzHN9keazRXvUg%3d%3d
It’s quick and straight forward, and will guide new student materials for the coming year.

Most importantly, a huge thank you on behalf of the student network for all your inspiring
activism over the past year – have a wonderful summer and I look forward to hearing of
your plans in the autumn!

I’ve done the survey and it really is ‘quick and straightforward’; it took me only a minute or two. Feedback is really important in general – we’ll be looking for your feedback throughout the year so be ready for that! – and it’s worth your time to make sure your experiences are represented.

GHRN Events

You may have seen us promoting GHRN events in the past. They are the Glasgow Human Rights Network. Their website speaks for itself, but I’ll briefly quote the introduction:

The Glasgow Human Rights Network aims to bring together researchers, practitioners,
members of civil society organisations and policymakers who address human rights issues.

They put on rather quite interesting events and conferences which are worth attending if you realy want to get into the nitty-gritty of human rights issues in depth.

This week there is a one-day conference on LGBTI rights in the Commonwealth:

18th July 9.00am – 5.00pm
Sir Charles Wilson Building, University of Glasgow
E15 on campus map

‘LGBTI Human Rights in the Commonwealth People of the Commonwealth’ is a free
one day conference. The event is being held in Glasgow on Friday 18th July, five days
before the opening of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

For full details and to register, please visit the Conference website.

The website is hosted over on the Equality Network

It looks to be a very interesting conference, and definitely worth a look; particularly given the focus we gave to LGBT issues last year.

Freshers Week 2014

It’s still a little over two months away, but we’ll be having a stall as usual during Freshers Week 2014. Not only that, but we’re planning on at least one event in collaboration with our good friends in STAR which I am really excited about. Details will come a bit closer to the time, but it promises to be really informative.

The reason I’m giving this advance heads-up as we’ll be looking for helpers- it reflects positively on the society if we’re got a well-run stall. The huge attendence after Fresher’s Week last year proves that if nothing else!

Letter Writing: A Reply

Towards the end of last term we did some letter writing under the banner of ‘Scotland Stands for Human Rights’. And we got a reply!

Reply from Blair Jenkins of Yes Scotland

It’s great to get a reply and when we do we want to make sure everyone is aware that we do- letter writing is one of the vital things we do as a group, and that Amnesty International does in general, so when we get feedback on it we’re sure to make the most of it.

There will be plenty more letter-writing opportunities in the year to come!

End of Newsletter

Well done for making to the end of the newsletter. If you have any questions, suggestions or feedback you can always get in touch either via the website or on Facebook or Twitter.

This week’s ‘thanks for reading’ reward is a picture of a cute bird I snapped having a drink in my back garden.

Bird is the word

I figured having featured VladPut last time y’all deserved something a bit, well… nicer.

Hope to see you next week at Pride!
Rob

Secret Policeman’s Success and Tomorrow’s Meeting

Hey everybody, I’ve got to say that Saturday was a rampant success even by our own already high standards.

Our first Scottish Student Conference was a succession of powerful and lucid speakers in front of an gather of activists from all over Scotland. The after party hosted by Philanthrobeats was the perfect end to a night that saw our Secret Policeman’s Ball raise a staggering £2248.85 – the highest total yet!

We’re going to have a meeting as usual tomorrow at 5pm in QMU Committee Room 1, but we’re going to take it relatively easy and head down to Jim’s after.

This Week’s Meeting

Since it’ll just a short meeting this week we’re just going to focus on an Urgent Action appeal from Amnesty International regarding the situation in Cambodia. It ties into quite a few things we have already touched on this year including women’s rights and forced evictions. We’ll head down to Jim’s afterwards to say thanks to everyone and who helped out on the Saturday night and try to take it a bit easy (if only this week).

Coming Up

There are a few good events to look forward to in the near future: 8pm Wednesday in Qudos – the GU Independence Referendum are having a debate on the Foreign Policy of an Independent Scotland. Regardless of your opinion on Independence this will be a talk worth seeing (even if only for our campaign video star Patrick Harvie MSP). http://www.facebook.com/events/101019473410409/ On Thursday Philanthrobeats are hosting a night at the SubClub to raise money for anti domestic violence campaign One Billion Raising. http://www.facebook.com/events/552663334755030/?ref=ts&fref=ts Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd of March is Action For Change – a fantastic training weekend at Amnesty International HQ in London. The weekend is free to attend and includes food and accommodation. It is a great opportunity to learn some campaigning skills and I can’t recommend it thoroughly enough. http://www.facebook.com/events/463814903674353/?fref=ts

See you tomorrow, Martin