Publicity Officer

Lucy Smith

Nottingham

I’m Lucy Smith and I am from SNoGS. I first heard about SSAGO the summer before university while volunteering at Wellies and Wristbands, a lovely fellow SSAGO member showed me how to register my interest in SNoGS! My experience at SSAGO for the last year and a half has been nothing but positive, between meetings with my university club, to rallies and balls alike. And I am running for publicity officer with the aim of promoting SSAGO more, so more people have the chance to make new friends and have new experiences just as I have.

 

I’m in my 2nd year of study at the University of Nottingham and have found such community in my club, as well as SSAGO nationally. I will be in 3rd year next year, but fear not! Between being a Brownie leader, an avid canoe polo player, SNoGS committee, and committee for Nottingham Nightline, I’ve learnt well how to balance roles between my studies and other commitments. I’m confident I can manage the role of an exec position alongside 3rd year.

 

I’ve been a member of Girlguiding since the 5 when I joined Rainbows. I have since become a Queens Guide and qualified leader, showing nothing but dedication to the movement. I’m still a leader at my Guide unit at home. Since coming to university I have opened and am co-leading a Brownie unit in Nottingham. I also volunteered at a range of Girlguiding events such as Wellies and Wristbands again (where I promoted SSAGO to younger members on my volunteer team), and Surrey West Scoutabout.

 

SSAGO life so far

Within my time at SSAGO, my proudest achievement (I think) has been being voted as ‘SNoG’ of the year at the end of my first year. Alongside that great achievement I’m currently general secretary for SNoGS, taking on responsibilities of weekly emails, AGM organisation, committee meeting agendas/minutes, and the SU award applications. My time on committee has been a great learning experience for me, to understand how to collaborate with other committee members. I’ve gained confidence in my ability to lead, put my ideas forward, and into action. I also was on committee for the Midlands Freshers camp this year, which again helped to develop my communication skills further as a lot of this planning took place over summer

 

What I want to bring to SSAGO

Now down to the nitty gritty. The main ideas I want to bring to SSAGO are as follows: monthly roundups, club focuses, developing resources to promote SSAGO to rangers and explorers, SSAGO TikTok, and support for publicity across clubs. I would also like to aim to make the publicity more accessible, including captions on any videos, as well as photo descriptions and dyslexia friendly fonts where they can be used.

 

Club based ideas

1. Monthly roundups. this is something we used briefly over my time at SNoGS. The idea that either by submission of a photo and a brief explanation of the meeting/event (or by my Instagram stalking methods), local SSAGO groups can have the opportunity to share

something they have done in the last month or so on the SSAGO Instagram/Facebook. This can be interesting and engaging to members of other clubs as well as a good way for clubs to take inspiration from other clubs activities. Another possible way to increase publicity within SSAGO is more club focus posts, giving insight to different local clubs, how they run meetings and socials, and giving them a chance to share what they like as members of SSAGO. Overall, my aim for this would be to help promote publicity within SSAGO and hopefully help clubs gain inspiration from others and build more of an online community.

2. Publicity support across clubs. Involving reaching out to publicity secretaries and creating a group/discord channel for them to opt into being a member of. The aim of this group would be to work together to share publicity ideas and resources, especially over the summer ahead of the freshers fairs. A chance to share tips and advice, do’s and don’ts, and the opportunity to learn from other’s experiences. I think building this small community as well as a bank of beneficial resources developed and shared from it can also be helpful to publicity officers on both local club committees and national exec in the future.

3. I would also work closely with the publicity teams of rallies and balls to help get the word out about the events across SSAGO social media platforms to hopefully boost attendees.

 

Publicity external to SSAGO

1. As well as publicity within SSAGO, I want to help promote SSAGO externally also. Generally speaking our main way to get new members into our clubs is by freshers fairs. And majority (not all) of the time freshers tend to be younger adults who may be active on a platform known as TikTok. I believe that by catering to the younger audience through the platform of TikTok is a great way to grab the attention of our target audience. By engaging with appropriate trends (considering scouting and guiding values, as well as SSAGO values), it can be a great way to engage with possible future members.

2. As previously mentioned, I discovered SSAGO through volunteering at Wellies and Wristbands. At the time I was a ranger and had never heard about SSAGO before. I would love to work to develop resources based around what SSAGO is like, what we do, a brief insight into rallies/balls. I’d then work to distribute these to local SSAGO clubs that they can distribute to their local Ranger and Explorer units, as well as resources to distribute to national scouting/guiding events that may have a high engagement with rangers/explorers.

I am passionate about SSAGO and want to do what I can to help publicise SSAGO, allowing more people have the chance to experience the friendships, the fun, and the opportunities I have had the luck of experiencing as a SSAGO member.