National Education and NOWSA Conference- tips and tricks for student campaigners

The National Union of Students held their annual Education Conference this week (4-6 July). The conferences saw debate and panelists including Lee Rhiannon and Doug Cameron and representatives from Amnesty, Jumbunna Idigenous House of Learning and the NSW Teacher’s Federation. As well as this there were a number of workshops run by student leaders from across the country. The following week i attended a conference held by the Network of Women Students Association (NOWSA). The following blog is my compilation of things i learnt, found, shared throughout these few days and i have written it over the time of the conferences. I did this in a hope to share important campaigning information with those who weren’t as lucky or privileged to get to experience the conference as i was able to.

Tip 1- LINNK YOUR FACEBOOK TO TWITTER

We all know how important social media is to a campaign, make life a little easier and link Facebook to your groups twitter. This means if twitter falls flat at least there will be some activity from what is posted on Facebook. This is something i leanrt so i am still getting a hang of how to use it but this is the app i found! http://www.facebook.com/faceboktwitter It worked really well and I have already started using it with the UOWYoungGreens twitter (follow us!).

Tip 2- TICKET YOUR EVENTS

If you have an event and want to advertise for it, why not have people ‘buy’ a ticket or if it’s a free event ‘obtain’ a ticket. This is a way to give people a tangible reminder that your event is on. Many websites will organise a ticket system for absolutely free and it just adds a layer to your advertising for an event. I haven’t trailed any websites yet but i’ve been told this one is good- http://www.greentix.com.au/

Interesting Debate- WHITE PRIVILEGE

White Privilege Checklist – the checklist on this blog was provided to students at the conference. I later attended a workshop called “Playing the Race Card” that discussed white privilege and a debate naturally arose. I think by the end it was agreed that there is privilege within certain groups. Personally, I found going through this checklist that a number of these things applied to myself and started to think what it would be like if i didn’t have this privilege. Now imagining I didn’t have the ability to do the things in the checklist i suddenly see how hard it might be to engage with student campaigns let alone live a happy and safe life. If you have the time take a look at the checklist and see what privilege you have and that others may not.

Observation- Lee Rhiannon v Doug Cameron

I was very excited to see a debate between Lee Rhiannon and Doug Cameron. I had seen Lee debate and speak on numerous occasions so i will be honest and say what i was most looking forward to was hearing Doug Cameron. I was very disappointed! I thought Lee spoke amazingly and not just because i am a greens tragic but Doug seemed to use all his time making digs at the Greens and criticising what Lee had said with nothing to back up his statements. I don’t want you to take away from this anything bad about Doug Cameron, you should make up your own mind I guess what it reminded me was that when you build people up it’s pretty disappointing when they turn out to be something else entirely! Maybe best to stop putting people on such high pedestals.

Women and social media-

I saw an incredibly eye-opening presentation at NOWSA by Nina Funnel, a truly inspiring woman, who spoke about social media. Here are some facts from that presentation-

•  58% of twitter users are female, but only 13% of Wikipedia users. Important as Wikipedia is a reference to nearly everything and it is clearly skewed to a male interpretation
• Girls today start dieting, on average, at ten years old
• Dove who are so well-known for their campaigns about loving yourself no matter your body shape or size are owned by the same company as lynx who have possibly the most sexist advertising on television and print media today
• there is no disney movie where the main female character has a female companion- they only have small animals as friends. Why? because adding another women would lead to competition

Cool findings-

I just adore this video, and hopefully it’s a nice end to my blog 🙂 hope you found something useful, if you had different experiences this conference season comment below and this can grow!