Queen’s Belfast Students’ Union (QUBSU) has placed considerable focus on its role as a partner in the local Belfast community and on the role that students play in the community. The Union has made a considerable impact on the local community, changing the perceptions of both students and local community members in the process.

Relations between Queen’s students and the local community reached a nadir in 2009 when riot police were required to intervene in St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in a large student area. This resulting television coverage, and associated negative comments by residents and politicians, made global news headlines. This crystalised the poor perception of students in the South Belfast area – alcohol-fuelled loud parties; sectarian tensions – particularly around St. Patrick’s Day; ‘studentification’ of parts of the city; empty streets at weekends.

Since that time, QUBSU has made a number of planned, strategic interventions to improve community relations, between all community stakeholders – students and non-students.

The Union’s new Strategic Plan 2012-2015, formed after consultation with over 1000 students, and external stakeholders, identifies good community relations as one of the seven key themes of the plan.

Key to this plan is building a sense of community amongst students in South Belfast. This has been driven by a number of key activities, including:

• Delivering classroom talks to over 1000 sixth form children, in 13 schools, in the run-up to St. Patrick’s Day, on the importance of being a positively active citizen and the community (accommodation, alcohol etc.) issues faced by students, and discouraging their attendance in student areas on St. Patrick’s Day. (in partnership with the Queen’s Community Affairs Unit)
• Centralising the coordination of all weekend activities in Queen’s – giving students a structured set of activities, encouraging the development of a ‘seven day’ student community.
• Established a Street Reps scheme, 10 volunteer student reps, to provide information and signposting to students and to report local community issues to the Union, resulting in early intervention and mitigation of accommodation, street-lighting, litter, parking, burglaries, damage to cars, personal safety and environmental concerns. This issues were then raised with Belfast City Council and the relevant government department, where appropriate.
• Students in the Community Survey – survey of hundreds of students to determine community issues requiring most focus form QUBSU.
• Students in the Community Workshops – Delivered to student in University accommodation on finding accommodation, financial, welfare and being positive community citizens, prior to them leaving halls and moving to private accommodation.
• Attendance at 5 different residents meetings each month, continually seeking to defuse community tensions, build relations and promote the positive impact of students in the community. Attendance at these meetings used to be tense, fraught affairs, but now local residents praise students for being a creative and proactive force in the community.
• Encouraged the Unviersity to give extra study days around St. Patrick’s Day, encouraging students to travel home for the period.

QUBSU has Established and developed a number of community volunteering initiatives to promote the development of a sense of ‘Belfast Community’ amongst Queen’s students and to promote the positive work that Queen’s students do in the community.

• Took the lead, centralising the coordination of volunteering activity in Queen’s under the banner of the Students’ Union, overseen by a Volunteering Action Group, with senior University management and Union officers.
• Employed an additional full-time staff member to support volunteering activity.
• Established a pilot Volunteering Academy that provides 240 students with: a gateway to volunteering opportunities; structured routes to internal and external volunteering accreditation; personal development workshops; access to volunteering project funding.
• Partnership with the Volunteer Now volunteering service to promote volunteering opportunities to students.
• Established a Volunteer of the Month award to recognise student volunteers.
• Our Union’s RAG has raised, to date, over £100,000 this year for four local charities that deliver for the young, the old, the unwell and the homeless: Shine Northern Ireland; Clic Sargent NI; The Buddy Bear Trust; Simon Community NI.
• Establishment of after-school study support clubs and community activities in areas of Belfast city. This activity has been focused in some of the most socio-economically deprived urban areas in the United Kingdom. The student-led peer-focused model introduced in by QUBSU in four schools/community centres provide children with art, creative literacy, enterprise and theatre workshops every week, in addition to providing study support in core curriculum areas. QUBSU doesn’t just focus on schools targeted by Queen’s widening participation initiatives – we go to areas that really need us. Feedback from parents and children has been overwhelming. The 90 participating Queen’s students have found the experience rewarding. Such has been the transformative nature of the homework clubs that we have been approached by politicians from the national assembly regarding establishing additional homework clubs in other areas of the city. Key to the success of the clubs has been the cross-community element – exposing young children from the protestant and catholic communities to student role models from opposing communities.
• Arising from the success of the homework clubs, a local development board recruited
  some of our homework volunteers to provide paid tuition over Easter to children from disadvantaged areas.
• Our Red Cross Society have delivered first aid and humanitarian workshops to over 3,000 school children in Belfast this year.

Our end of year event is our Voluntering Excelleny Awards.

There will be specially invited guests with representatives from the local community including Belfast City Council, the PSNI, residents from the local area, senior members of staff from the University and local councillors and MLAs.

The event was a strong, positive celebration last year and we hope to have the same effect this year, as well as increasing the impact we have on local and national media. This event could be a strong means of getting the word across Northern Ireland about the positive impact that the Queen’s Community is having on the community as a whole.