Hello everyone and happy New Year!

I hope you all had a lovely break and if you are feeling a bit rubbish about being back at uni then I hope this gives you a few things to look forward to at least. If you didn’t make any of our meetings last year but are still interested in what we do, then we would love to see you. As always though, you can join us at any time and there are no membership fees – just come along when you can! This weekly newsletter will detail all of our upcoming events so even if you can’t make the meetings, there are plenty of other occasions to join us. If you have any questions about anything, just drop us an email: mail@guamnesty or you can get in touch with the relevant committee member who are listed on our Facebook page and website.

We’ve got a very busy semester with lots of campaigning events and our biggest fundraiser of the year coming up. Here are our plans for January, and some other events that may be of interest to you:

Next meeting: Tuesday 14^th 5pm Williams Room, John McIntyre (SRC) Building

-          Secret Policeman’s Ball Publicity Launch

**Please note the change of venue for this meeting!**

Our Vice President, Debbie, and the SPB Sub-committee have been working very hard to get everything organised for our 6^th annual Secret Policeman’s Ball comedy fundraiser. This is our biggest event of the year and has won multiple awards from both the SRC and Amnesty International UK for its success.

The date this year is the 22^nd February, so get that in your diary! Tickets will be available online soon.

Our first meeting back is going to be the official publicity launch and our host Billy Kirkwood has organised for a few of the performers to give us a short preview of their material to get us excited for the main event. Since it is our first meeting back, we will be going for food/drinks afterwards so you are all welcome to come along.

Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/245702882272000/

Tuesday 21^st January: Guantanamo Bay

Our chosen campaign for this month is Guantanamo Bay. Despite Obama’s promise to have it closed, Saturday 11^th marked the 12^th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay and for a number of inmates, including British resident Shaker Aamer, this will also be their 12^th year as prisoners. Many of these individuals have in fact been cleared for release but remain detained at the facility despite international pressure to have them released. Find out more on the AIUK website.

Guest speaker: we are hoping to have Dr Iain Banks from the University to deliver a presentation on the history of Guantanamo Bay but are awaiting confirmation.

Wednesday 29^th January: Panel Discussion – Syria: I can still see hope

GU Amnesty are a member of the GU Coalition for Syrian Refugees, a group formed last year to hold events to raise money for charities who are providing aid to those affected by the conflict in Syria. One of these events is a panel discussion which we have co-organised and will welcome guest speaker Assaad Al Achi from the Syrian Non-Violence Movement, a group that AIUK is working with and supporting.

Other events:

14^th – 16^th February: Students for Co-operation: Founding Conference

A message from Students for  Co-operation:

Hi, we’d appreciate it if you could see if any of your members are interested in or are in student cooperatives as we are having our founding conference of Students for Cooperation in Birmingham in February! We have some funding too to get students down from Scotland. It is a new national organisation (and cooperative!) for student cooperatives to get together and to help new cooperatives form, thanks!

Here is the event page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1424534744446779/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

 

22^nd – 23^rd March: Newcastle University hosts the NE Regional Student Conference

We are invited to the North-East regional conference organised by students at Newcastle University. The agenda will be emailed to us at the end of the month but they have requested that we let them know if any of us are interested in attending. Arrangements for food and accommodation will also be detailed later on.

If you are interested then let me know – president@guamnesty.org.uk

I hope your first week back doesn’t hit too hard. See you on Tuesday for some laughs 🙂

Ruth