Our Cake Faeries are out there meeting each other and giving out biscuits!

We are also offering the Soc-Parenting parallel of College Parenting to whoever would like some such welcoming people who know their way around Cambridge's lighter-hearted socs...

AND EXPLAINING WHAT WE DO

Minorly, we survey welcoming and welfare available in Cambridge. We may sometimes politely suggest some of the providers of such things change some of their ways, however we are NOT activists. We are:

* Havers of ideas, and our group has been having these for 17 years, with notes handed down and scientific method applied. So we Remember and we Refine.

* People who have and run our own systems.

Majorly, what we are is a provider of Alternative Welcome by means known as Guerilla Welfare!

Do not misunderstand us :|

We do NOT fight the forces of conventional welfare.

Rather, we look to complement them in the 'mountainous areas' where they are less active/effective :)

* Most of our system is that a few of the (mostly lighter-hearted) uni socs can be run thoughtfully to Escape! from the shortcomings of standard problems.

For Example, College Parenting. This is practical and participatory welcome-welfare, in which people who've been in Cambridge some time are allotted to newly arrived people. Minorly, we suggest how to Avoid! pitfalls and how College Parenting itself can self-patch. Majorly, we run a Soc-Parenting parallel of it (and encourage othersuch parallels). This has to do with how College Parenting is only sometimes a useful match-up of people. Thus there should be no stigma attached to changing parents or getting extra parents, whether in the college or through mostly lighter-hearted uni socs that greatly concentrate similar people so that one gets parents with whom one can see eye to eye.

Another Example: Freshers Week and the 2 weeks of Squashes are simply the wrong timescale as regards the integration of the most vulnerable 10 percent or so of the population: something like those we term shy people and different people. It is then unfair and unfortunately thoughtless from a collective perspective for the great majority of Cambridge's activities to concentrate so high a proportion of their recruiting and welcoming effort into those three weeks. We aim to rectify this by: making it clear that people still looking for socs/groups/friends after 3 weeks should not give up, even if they are being repeatedly ignored and rejected. Publicizing some socs that do take special care of new arrivals outside of the first three weeks of the year. Encouraging more socs to, if sincere, label their flyers and constitutions with words such as "Grad-friendly", "inclusive of Anglia Ruskin", "Trans-friendly" or the more widely encompassing "this is a Safer Space, no personal abuse tolerated, a person is upset if they say they are, apologies are to be expected, a person who complains about a particular kind of abuse has a right to expect them as did it to refrain from repeats in their presence".

* We are ourselves a safer space provider. Anyone can participate bar any who abuse our safer space, for the safety and wellbeing of our other participants and organizers. Here is a sketch of our people's type of Constitution . This is like any other safer space, and, as regards our organizers not accepting to receive abuse, it is also muchlike the counselling service - the safety and dignity of our own people comes first in such cases. Any participant can become a voluntary junior organizer - no restriction on numbers, no actual commitment required, we treat your occasionally helping out as a bonus. As regards becoming one of our senior organizers, anyone can volunteer, but nobody has any right to demand. It is for us to choose which of you we trust to help out vulnerable people. We reserve the right to not comment on why we don't take somebody in as a senior organizer. These practises are similar to Linkline's and for similar reasons. We are unlikely to take in any senior organizers who have not regularly helped out whilst they were junior organizers, but, we repeat, that is NOT sufficient to make any demands about becoming a senior organizer.

* We are also ourselves a Soc-Family.

OUR DIVISIONS

*** Some suggestions for what to do if you are new or may be something like what we call shy or different :

* valuable lighter-hearted socs: why these are useful and our list of Socs we presently recommend as particularly welcoming and tolerant places!

* Welfare Conduits (where to turn for for help): how these work and our list of them

*** Recruit and Retain:

* Soc Parenting

* Courses in Soc-Running that's both effective and within our ideals: see items 2 to 5 of our Guerilla Welfare section below :)

* Avatars (big creatures that can fix your soc's difficulties if it happens to be a tolerant place).

* Cake Faeries (moral support through often-secret biscuitings, esp in the exam season).

*** SOFTPOMS (SOc For The Promotion Of Multiple Socs: how differences in people have a right to be reflected through a given activity having more than one soc/soclist, whether by them not getting on or by one lot putting eg safer space conditions as more important than the activity itself).

*** Activities that provide a gentle introduction to some aspects of women's safety

*** The Welfare Hunt (like a Scavenger Hunt, but based on welfare-related items).

*** Guerilla Welfare. 0) LAWS , 1) The New, The Shy and The Different , 1.1) Fresher Graduates , 2) Small Numbers Interactions , 2.1) Parenting (as in College Parenting) , 2.1.1) Value of Multiple Parenting Schemes , 2.1.2) Soc-Parenting Parallel of College Parenting , 2.2) Cake Faerie-ing , 3) Welfare Value of Lighter-Hearted Socs , 3.1) Soc-Welcoming I: Target Person , 3.2) Soc-Welcoming II: Avoid! Being OutNumbered! 4) Safer Spaces , 4.1) Safer Spaces as Reason for Multiple Socs , 4.2) Our own Small Numbers Interactions are Safer Spaces , 4.3) Our Safer Space Events , 4.4) Soc-Badging , 5) Lighter-Hearted Soc-Design , 5.1) Logistics: Participant Numbers , 5.2) Logistics: Soc-Running Materials , 6) DEFENSE TYPES , 7) Welfare Conduit Analysis , 8) Advertising Welfare , 8.1) Welfare is Not Spam . 9) Sketch of AltWelcome's Organization , 9.1) Forms of Government of Cambridge's Socs , 9.2) Our Voluntary Junior Co-organizers , 9.3) Our Safer Space Custodian Training Program ,

* The Temple of the Small Gods (a place that supports lighter-hearted Socs that are too small to run at all regularly at present).