Social Action Hubs are grassroots organisations committed to strengthening their communities and developing local leadership through organising, participation and action.
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Taking the Lead: Transforming Campus and Community Life Through Community Organising
Student Unions have always sought to represent students, build community and create change, which is why community organising can offer a practical framework that can strengthen each of these functions.
Organising with student unions involves building collective power, running campaigns, and developing student leaders through frameworks like the Community Organising Framework
Key Elements of Student Union Organising include
Building Long-Term Relationships: Moving past simple consultations to create deep connections among students and the wider campus community.
Building Collective Power: Partnering with networks to work on shared local issues such as housing, cost of living, and transport to improve life in the community
Training and Leadership: Developing student leaders and giving them the skills in listening campaigns, house meetings, and strategic action.
Over the last 2 years we have trained 3 Student Unions in community organising. In September last year we trained the Union of Brunel Students in Issue Based Organising.
This session enabled them to understand what issue-based organising is in practice and understand the organising cycle in context.
They explored the difference between problems and issues, learnt how to identify and choose winnable, tangible issues. It also introduced them to power mapping, practical issue analysis and how to plan a campaign.
We did follow up training with them in February to embed what they had learnt and to see what they had applied.
"I’m pleased to share that we have made encouraging progress with our officer organising. Chartwells have taken meaningful steps towards addressing several of the officers’ concerns, which is a positive development. In addition, we have successfully elected two new part-time officers (Home Women's and Postgraduate Officer), as well as our first dedicated Community Organiser, who will be leading work on tackling the loneliness epidemic /loneliness on campus"
Maria, Union of Brunel Students
We also put on bespoke training for City St Georges between April 2024 and October 2025 both in person and online for students and staff exploring community organising and issue based organising.
Recently we delivered an Introduction to Community Organising training to 14 people from the University of Derby Students’ Union to help them strengthen the skills and confidence of staff, officers and student leaders so they are able to bring people together, build relationships and create positive change within the student community.
Participants were a mixture of staff, student leaders and Student organisers who work directly with student communities and were particularly interested in understanding the principles of community organising and applying these approaches within their roles and projects.
The training was designed around the participants’ desire to better understand community organising and gain practical skills they could apply in their roles and communities.
As part of the training, participants explored a real-life case study concerning international nursing students who had reported experiencing racism and feeling unheard whilst on placement.
The group used a community organising framework to explore how students could be listened to, supported to share their experiences safely, build collective power, and work with the Students’ Union and university to improve accountability and standards among placement providers.
The group identified a number of next steps following the training:
Continue developing their community organising skills through further training.
Build organising capacity across the Students’ Union and student communities.
Apply organising approaches to real issues affecting students, including the experiences of international nursing students on placement.
Develop ongoing listening and relationship-building work with students.
Progress towards becoming a Social Action Hub, embedding community organising and student-led change into their wider approach to engagement, leadership and representation.
Due to this increasing interest from Students’ Unions in our work we have decided to put on a webinar on 24th September. This will be an introductory session providing participants with a shared understanding of community organising and exploring what an organising Student Union might look like.
