Sam Clarke’s Random Acts of Kindness Campaign

Sam Clarke’s RAK Campaign

At the SU, we love to champion and raise awareness for campaigns and individuals who do so much for their UOS community and the student experience. We’d like to introduce you to one of our many wonderful student officers, Sam Clarke. Her role at UOS is the Students’ Union Social Sciences and Humanities School Officer, which is a voluntary part-time position that students elect. She helps to improve students’ academic experiences and to make the university a more inclusive place. Sam started the campaign last September, and since then has been making every day at UOS a little kinder. We spoke to Sam about her Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) campaign to find out more about what she has been up to.

What inspired the idea for the RAK campaign?

During her first year as an Officer, Sam looked for ways to promote student mental health, as she felt it’s an under looked topic even though it’s an important issue. In conjunction with Sam Last from Student Life, Sam brought in Bonnie the therapy dog as a way to help support students with their own mental health struggles. When she got elected for a second time, Sam looked to organising bigger projects in her role as a Part Time Officer, and how she could engage and help students. During her current term, she reached out to businesses, both local and national, to hopefully gain their support in the work she would be doing for the campaign, and how we could increase student engagement.

Sam anticipated doing a range of monthly events for students. Out of the 43 supporting businesses, the Juice Mix Bar, Asda, Morrisons and Tesco were a massive help in putting on multiple events with their donated supplies, prizes and time. Sam didn't expect the amount of responses and generosity she received from organisations, and how even when a few had charity alignments they still offered their support. She really wanted to start these events to boost awareness of the importance of helping to support student mental health.

How long has the RAK campaign been going for?

Sam began working on the campaign in July 2023, going either into businesses in person, calling them up, or emailing head offices, going through the different chains of command to get the okay, and hopefully their support with the campaign. From then, Sam’s focus was focused on plotting the events for the first few months, and then officially launching the campaign in September 2023. Sam says “I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to visit cohorts during induction week, to not just talk about the SU and how they can get involved, but to also introduce my campaign and first event. I also used social media and student-wide emails to hopefully reach everyone and give them all the opportunity to engage with events.”

What motivates you to do the campaign?

Sam shares that her biggest drive comes from her own struggles with mental health, stating “Over the years I have struggled with depression and anxiety. Many people may not think it when they see me and say, oh, she's very extroverted and out there. Underneath there is a lot of anxieties and insecurities there. Even with this campaign I felt the need to run stuff past my supportive friends and fellow officers.

It's something that especially is being helped through doing the bits with the SU and having the support with it.

If I hadn't been doing work within societies, and my friends had not supported me by giving me a much needed push to get out of my comfort zone and apply for officer, I don't know if I would have had the confidence and the skills to organise and launch this campaign.”

Explain the RAK campaign to anyone who doesn't know?

The Random Acts of Kindness campaign is about fostering and supporting student mental health. It's about doing little activities each month, hosting different events, where students can choose which ones they want to get involved with, get them engaging and talking to others, as well as hopefully bring a smile to their faces. Some have offered up their time to assist events and spread kindness that way, others have donated their prizes to other students or nominated others to win chocolate. It’s about reminding people a little act of kindness may mean a lot to someone else, and to keep talking and supporting each other.

What do you do in the RAK campaign?

Sam wanted all the events to be free for students, which she achieved by collecting donations from businesses, as well as the support from the SU. She started the campaign off by hosting a prize giveaway, which included over £1500 worth of donated items, activities, and days out.

For the next month, Sam hosted a sweet treats event, where students and staff also donated cakes alongside Asda and Tesco for everyone to enjoy. This was followed by a Christmas Secret Santa, which people really enjoyed, because they wanted it to do it regardless of how many showed.

Sam then hosted a lucky dip draw featuring a variety of prizes, a self-care event in collaboration with Lush Ipswich, where they very kindly gave 100 free of their brand-new face masks away, alongside consultations for students so they could just go along, and get lots of free samples of different Lush products .

There was also a wall of positivity board in the Waterfront Building where people could post positive, kind messages about someone else, as well as different positive affirmations. This was to hopefully bring smiles to people's faces when they see what messages were

on there and encourage them to also leave messages for other people as well. Sam also collaborated with the Craft Society and SU President Katie to host a craft event at the SU Home Away From Home dinner club.

March’s Easter egg hunt seemed to be very popular with the students, where students were literally running around campus hunting to find five of the 193 little miniature bunnies and chicks hidden around campus, which meant they could claim one of the 91 Cadbury’s eggs and Free-From bunnies Sam provided. Other departments got involved with it as well and hid bunnies and chicks in the library, student centre and the careers spaces because it gave more areas to hunt.

Most recently, Sam held a Level 6 Chocolate Pick Me Up event, where students nominated final year students who could do with a chocolate boost, and 15 of those received either Celebrations or Heroes box, or NOMO Free From chocolate bars.

All the events were open to every student at the Ipswich campus, and created to be as inclusive as possible, giving every student a chance to engage.

What are your goals for the RAK campaign in the future?

Sam’s overall goals were to get students engaging and continue to support each other, as well as to hopefully bring some smiles to

people’s faces. Now that she is coming up to the end of her time as School Officer, Sam hopes some of what she has done is carried on, and to keep raising awareness about student mental health, and ways we can support it. Sam says “I feel that mental health awareness days should be all year round, not dedicated to one day. It should be something that is supportive with things put on throughout the year. I feel that switching the days of when things happens gives an opportunity to meet new people and a chance to engage. Then it may give more students an opportunity to get involved with these type of campaign events.”

Have you got any future events coming up?

Whilst Sam’s time as a Part Time Officer comes to an end in June, there are things in the works at the moment, she has something exciting coming up with Lush which will be revealed soon. Keep an eye on her social media for more information - @samclarke_uos_sshschoolofficer on Instagram.

How can students contact you?

Students can contact Sam by seeing her around campus or messaging her on Instagram or email which are below!

Instagram

Email