Badges are a great way for student groups to demonstrate what their group has been doing throughout the year, as well as our way of recognising achievements and contributions as a student group through the year.
From demonstrating traits that help people feel more welcome within our groups to working with other students and groups at the university, there are many ways that to achieve student group badges for our student-led groups to demonstrate successes throughout the year!
About The Badges
There are 6 badges that your group can earn: Community & Civic, Sustainability, Make a Change, Supporting Staffs, Collaboration and Inclusion. Once earned, these badges carry over to the first semester of the next academic year to showcase how your group has performed to potential new members.
Below is an explanation of each badge and how you can work towards earning them.
Community & Civic
The Community & Civic badge is awarded for developing & improving civic partnerships within our local community.
Group activities that support this badge can be anything from charity fundraising as a part of campaigns like Staffs Sticks Together and Movember, or even running your own charity fundraising events for a cause that your group is passionate about, to helping to do things in the local community such as Cop Shop helping to repaint the footsteps on the way to Hanley or Christian Union giving out free meals for Christmas. There are always ways your group can help the local community and we have lots of information about community volunteering on our Volunteering News webpage.
Sustainability
The sustainability badge is awarded for hosting or participating in sustainability themed activities, and / or utilising the Green Fund, which offers a micro grant for student groups wanting to host activities, campaigns or events that support one of the UN’s sustainable development goals, and to make your event more environmentally and sustainability friendly.
This could include events that involve using recycled or sustainable materials (for example, sessions like Cosplay and Craft Society’s cardboard cosplay use recycled cardboard) as well as incorporating sustainability related content into society activities like talks and activities (for example, planting plants or promoting sustainable events), or organising a litter pick.
Student groups could attend the local Grow Club events that we have listed on What’s On, deliver events as part of the Union’s Green Week in March, or have their committee leaders complete FREE Carbon Literacy training. (Just let the Student Engagement team know what you’ve done so it counts towards the badge!)
Make a Change
The Make a Change badge is for positive contributions to making positive change for students, such as group representation at Better Staffs' Forums, or Student Group Executive Meetings. Committee attendance at executive meetings to represent members is a good way to work towards this badge, as well as appearing for other opportunities to verbalise issues for students as a committee member. Advocating for positive change and giving feedback is an important trait for our groups to demonstrate to ensure that we are doing the best we can for students, and so we would like to reward groups that go out of their way to do so.
Supporting Staffs
The Supporting Staffs badge is given for contributing to or supporting events benefiting the wider Staffs campus community. This includes group representation at Open Days and Move-in days, hosting an event as a part of the Squeezebox Nights programme for non members to attend, or other University/Union led events (For example, co-hosting Union events like Misfit or Stoke Con Trent as a part of a student group or supporting events hosted by ResLife).
Collaboration
The Collaboration badge is given for working together with other groups – sharing opportunities, ideas and resources to plan creative events and provide more opportunities for students to engage with each other in new ways. Groups can work towards this badge through collaboration with other student groups, for example events like Tavern Night hosted by multiple societies or even working with different parts of the university (for example ResLife) and student groups from different universities to create new and interesting events!
If you are planning any collaborations with groups, keep us updated on these events so that we can make sure you are being rewarded for collaborative activities.
Inclusion
The Inclusion badge is for groups that show continuous effort to create an inclusive space for their members. This includes demonstrating inclusive practices, providing a variety of ways for students to engage, working alongside our student-led networks, aiming to overcome barriers that stop students from engaging, celebrating member's achievements and overall encouraging all members to achieve their potential.
Some examples of ways that you can help demonstrate your group’s dedication to inclusion could be events that are focused around raising awareness for issues that affect others (for example, racism, mental health etc.), hosting activities that support the participation of all members (for example neurodivergent members, commuter students or lower income members), sessions to educate members on how to safely participate in society activities, articles/posts to celebrate member achievements or committee members completing our supplementary Pro Nouns training.
It's really important that committee leaders are communicating the work that they have contributed towards badges, so this is recorded and counted towards earning the badge. This is done by:
- Selecting the relevant Event Type Tag when committee add events to our website
- Selecting the relevant badge on the Events registration form
- Or emailing Student Engagement to tell the Students' Union what the group has acheived.
We acknowledge that as leaders of student groups and as students in general, the time committee leaders put into group activities is not negligible. Badges are our way of acknowledging that extra work that our student leaders dedicate to help deliver the Students’ Union’s values, so make sure to keep us updated on anything you have planned or already done that could contribute towards your student group badges