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Sadly, that home away from home wasn’t Miami or LA, but the slightly less glamorous Bristol. But then again, perhaps this writer needs to find better things to do with his Saturday night.
“It was a really, really good week," says Emily Cousins, "everyone who was there got on really well. I know it sounds cheesy but everyone bonded, and because everyone was interested in the same stuff you get to know people really quickly.”
The week in question was 3rd - 7th September, the training week for the ‘winners’ of the Oxfam Change campaign. The initiative is a highly competitive programme to train up student activists to promote Oxfam campaigns on campuses and in cities across the world. 2007’s intake saw five candidates for every one of 35 places.
Potential campaigners first applied at Easter. Those deemed most committed and enthusiastic endured a “really scary” phone interview, and by June the wheat had been cut from the chaff. Oxfam paid expenses to Bristol and put up their prospective workers in a local youth hostel.
Only when they arrived in Bristol did Kate Evans, Emily Cousins and Andrew Godfrey realise that three of those places had gone to fellow York students.
What we do on an individual level, if everyone did the same it would make a big difference.
Cousins said: “The course itself was fantastic in terms of the training, there were external speakers and campaigners.” In addition, there were workshops on dealing with the public and the media.
“It’s helped,” says Evans, “if you were on your own the temptation would be to neglect it a little bit but there are people there saying ‘come on we need to do this’." The “this” in question is a 6 month timetable of campaigning on issues such as climate change, world poverty and fair trade.
They’re delighted to tell me that in September, accompanied by activists wearing enormous Gordon Brown masks, they charged around Bristol’s Millennium Square 8 times to represent the UN’s 8 millennium development goals. Most recently they took part in the worldwide ‘Stand Up’ campaign to pressure the governments of developed nations to do more to combat poverty.
This coming Friday the group will lobby local MP Hugh Bayley over climate change when he speaks on the issue in Vanbrugh. Last summer local activists persuaded Bayley to abstain from a vote over the commissioning of a new generation of British nuclear missiles.
They’ll arrange events throughout December to raise awareness of the UN climate change conference in Bali and will remain busy until the last key issue on this year’s Change plan agenda, international women’s day on 8th March.
What is it, then, that makes them tick?
Godfrey said: “I think we’re most looking forward to planning an Oxjam event, which I think would be quite cool, especially in York. An Oxjam event is music, but it’s Oxfam inspired, well not inspired...” “A bit like Live 8, except on a smaller scale!” Evans interjects.
Despite lacking society status, the select group have been successful so far. Evans chairs People and Planet Society, Cousins is active in the NGS, and Godfrey is chair of the Labour Society on campus. As Cousins colourfully puts it: “It’s quite an incestuous political environment on campus, everyone’s involved in pretty much every society. It is a social thing as well, yes.”
That sense of friendship and togetherness underpins the conversation, as well as, The Yorker suspects, every day spent padding the streets petitioning over shared concerns. Indeed, it’s clear that the average day’s campaigning would wear down the average Joe.
“I think there’s always the worry that just people are really apathetic about getting involved in stuff, just anything political,” Cousins says. “I think it’s just a challenge that we have with everything we do trying to get people involved and engaged.”
Godfrey adds that all too often shoppers are over-protective of their hard earned cash: “Some people can be quite cold. When we did it in Bristol people were ‘Go away’ and then when I said I just want you to sign a petition then they say ‘oh really what’s it for?’.”
Yet there’s a serious side to all this, despite the obvious enjoyment of all three. The indifference they confess they’re often met with, the sacrifice of social and academic time and the hard work are all down to the conviction that what’s most important are the issues they address through the Change campaign.
“At the end of the day we’re trying to make a very small contribution,” Godfrey concludes. “What we do on an individual level, if everyone did the same it would make a big difference.”
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