* Havers of ideas, and our group has been having these for three decades, 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
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.
As regards our organizers not accepting to receive abuse, this is also muchlike the
counselling
service
- the safety and wellbeing 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
term
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 ,
our Helpline List of these ,
and a place here
where a number of Survivors of Abuse, including from non-mainstream communities,
have finally spoken
out, to the extent that they can.
* Our links concerning Asexual (Ace) and Aromantic
(Aro) people.
* Some issues concerning Closeted People, Invisible Minorities and so on are
beginning to appear here.
*** Recruit and Retain:
* Apprenticeships 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.
1 ,
2 ,
3 ,
4 ,
5 ,
6 ,
7 ,
8 ,
9 ,
10 ,
11 ,
12 ,
13 ,
14 .
* The Temple of the Small
Gods
(a place that supports lighter-hearted Socs that are too small to run at all
regularly at present).