A SEMESTER OF ACTIVISM

Some committee members at the last meeting of the semester, from left to right Lois, Jason, Sarah, Karly, Adam and Mark.

Well everyone this has been our most active Semester since our creation last year! We have achieved so much in such a short period of time and it has been the best of craic the whole way!

Heres a summary of what we have been up to and achieved this academic year so far:

Our first activity was taking part in the annual Belfast Pride Parade. QUB Greens and Green Party members took part and showed our support to the gay community and to express our belief that the bigotry and hate of the DUP and the wicked witch of the north is completely unnaceptable in todays society.

At the Freshers Bazaar we managed to sign up 67 interested students! We met so many people that day and once again we could see that Green Issues are top of the agenda in many students books and shows the need for a progressive, environmental, activist society at QUB, the QUB Greens!

We took part in the Irish Language Rally and Parade in Belfast in October. The Young Greens believe that an Irish Language Act is long overdue as a result of the shortcomings of the Stormont Assembly. The Irish Language has become a political football at Stormont, it needs to be depoliticised because it is not a political issue, it is a Human Rights Issue, that can only be solved by an Irish Language Act. We marched to express our support to the Irish Community and Irish Language and to express our belief that the racist trollings of certain Ministers in the Stormont Assembly should not be accepted in a just and forward society.

For the first time the QUB Greens have a full committee made up of two gender balanced Co-Chairs, Secretary, Treasurer and 5 non-portfolio officers. We have become a strong and dedicated team becoming one of the most active political and campaign based societies on campus.

Four QUB Greens were elected onto the Student Council and two of our members managed to get elected onto the Environmental Committee and also the Equality Committee.

We hosted a talk from the Sustainable Energy Association in which the SEA Project Manager gave us a presentation on the SEA's campaign for Green Energy in Ireland.

The QUB Greens have been actively involved in the newly formed Youth Mental Health Strategy which is campaigning to bring about a change of attitudes and opinions towards mental health in Northern Ireland.

Monday 1 December was World AIDS Day, part of the global campaign to tackle the epidemic that is HIV/AIDS and to raise awareness about it. The QUB Greens worked together with the Students Union, Rag, Oxfam and Amnesty International to raise awarness of the issue and also to provide sexual health information to the student body.

At our last meeting of the semester the QUB Greens looked over our successes to date and also we looked forward! Next semester we hope to continue our momentum and hope to organise a voter registration campaign on campus coming up to the European Election. We will also continue our Sexual Health campaign, Our mental health campaign and will be involved in many more campaigns throughout the campus!


The QUB Greens would like to send a very special and green farewell to Sarah Tansey! Sarah came to QUB for this semester as a politics student from the USA. Sarah gave a helping hand during our campaigns and we were all gutted to see her have to go back home after the first semester! Good Luck Sarah! We hope you enjoyed Greening up the campus with the QUB Greens!

We would like to wish everyone as happy and wonderful time of year! Good luck in your January exams!

Adam and Karly
QUB Greens
Co-Chairs