16 – 17 Turl Street
Oxford
OX1 3DH
e: [email protected]
t: 01865 264168
Promoting your Support Group: Checklist
There are lots of different things you can do to promote your support group. Some of these may be
quite elaborate. Some may have little to do with the support group itself. You may want to check out
the SRSH Mental Health Campaign Handbook (www.srsh.co.uk/makingchange) for ideas and
suggestions for running a campaign. There are some very simple things that you should make sure
you are doing to directly promote your support group:
1. Get an Advert in the Student Union Paper / magazine – whatever they call it, you should be on it!
Speak to your Students Union media centre or your welfare officer to talk about how to get an
advertisement in here. Have a shot at negotiating a permanent deal to run an advert in every edition
– after all, you are providing a truly valuable support service to students and the student union
SHOULD shout about you, LOUD and PROUD!
2. Posters or LCD’s
You should have A3 SRSH poster up around campus. If you haven’t got any posters, email us and ask
for some more! You’ll notice there is a big white box on the posters – this is for you to put the time
and location of your meetings. You can also put your direct email address. Remember, as soon as
you put specific details on your posters they become time limited – you’ll need to take them down
and put up new ones if you change the time or location of your meetings. Check with your student
union – you may need to have their logo on the posters to put them up in the Union. If so, get this
printed on stickers and pop it in the big white box!
Where to stick the blue tack…
*
Halls of residence
*
Students’ Union Building
*
Sports Centre
*
Campus Doctors Surgeries
www.srsh.co.uk
Talking Changes Lives
We are kindly supported by Comic Relief, The Welton Foundation, UnLtd and Student Hubs
SRSH is a charitable company registered with Companies house, no. 7493445 and the Charities Commission,
no. 1142783
*
Back of toilet doors
*
The medical school
Your student union may even be able to help you put up posters – at many universities there are
systems in place to help do poster distribution. Speak to your Welfare Officer to ask if he / she can
help.
A No Poster Policy? Whether or not there is a “No Poster Policy” in place at your union, if they have
plasma screens (LCDs), you should try to get your poster on these. Obviously not the paper version!
Visit the internal section of the SRSH website to download a PDF of the poster. Do make sure they
are going up for free – no one wants a massive & unexpected bill!
3. Shout out on the Student Union Radio
Whether it is 5000 or only 5 students listening to the Student Union radio, it is worth reaching this
audience! Contact the radio producers and ask if they will interview you about the support group.
You might want to check out the SRSH Branding Guidelines before going on air. At the end of this
document there are suggestions of things we encourage SRSH volunteers to talk about and things
that we’d rather you didn’t say. This should help you think about what you’d like to say and how
you’d like to phrase it!
4. On the World Wide Web
Your students union has a website. Fact. You should be on this. Fact. Have a chat to your Welfare
officer about how you get your group listed on the website. It maybe that you are listed as a society,
however it may also be sensible to have a page about you under any section on student welfare or
student health.
5. You have friends? They have friends? And they have friends…
The wonderful thing about facebook is content can go viral. We try to channel all facebook activity
through the SRSH page – www.facebook.com/fb.SRSH - as this has a high following, this helps things
go viral. The higher the following though, the more people the page will reach. It works
exponentially. If you invite one person to join the page, things posted will reach around 300
additional people (all of your friend’s friends).
6. Lecture shout outs
Not everyone’s cup of tea, but believe it or not, however nervous you feel, when you stand up there
in front of a hall full of people, they will all think you are super confident! I (Nicola) did lots of shout
outs as a student. I was always terrified, but I picked one friendly looking person on the front row
and spoke loudly and slowly to them. Despite my fear, I always came out of the event alive and most
of my peers got this crazy idea that I was super confident. Give it a go, I promise it won’t be as bad as
you expect! And the impact is massive – people really pay attention to information they hear out
loud from a peer. It will help make your whole project appear more alive and more approachable.
www.srsh.co.uk
Talking Changes Lives
Remember for a lecture shout out, you must ask the lecturer first. Just explain that you run a
support group and would like to let the students in the audience know about it. Ask if he / she would
mind if you spoke for two minutes before the start of the lecture. Ask if he / she can help you get the
audience to shut up first – lectures are very skilled at doing this!
If you are not sure what to say, how about
“Hi. I just want to take two minutes of your time to tell you about SRSH. SRSH runs support groups
for students with eating disorders. I am currently volunteering with the project. I’ve been trained by
SRSH to facilitate the group that we run here. We meet every two weeks (details). Our group is
informal, we don’t have a set agenda, we just offer time and space for anyone with eating issues to
come and chat. The group is completely confidential, we won’t tell anyone you turned up. We run to
give people with eating disorders the chance to meet other individuals facing similar problems, to
share ideas, support, advice and encouragement. I’m there to make sure the group is always
supportive, friendly and positive. Any questions, just get in touch – my email’s on the board.”
7. Emailing departmental mailing lists
If you can convince a departmental administrator to send an email out to the students, this will
reach hundreds of students in one go! You can find the right email addresses with a little bit of
searching, you want to email someone like the department administrator or school secretary.
You might want to write the following:
To whom it may concern,
I am emailing on behalf of SRSH @ ****. We work with the (students union / university
counselling service) to run a support group for students with eating disorders. If it is
possible, we would greatly appreciate it if you could forward the below to the students on
your course.
**
We know that living with an eating disorder is not easy. It is harder still when no one knows.
It’s hard holding things together when you have no one to talk to.
We run a support group for students with eating disorders, providing a completely safe and
confidential environment for you to meet other students who know what it’s like to live with
an eating disorder. We know that giving people the opportunity to talk to others who
understand makes a real difference. SRSH groups are informal, student run and have a prorecovery focus.
The group meets (details)
If you would like to know more about the group, or talk to the group facilitators before
attending a meeting, please visit www.srsh.co.uk or email (name) at (SRSH email address).
All correspondence is always treated in confidence.
www.srsh.co.uk
Talking Changes Lives