Young members: Making something positive happen in your workplace
Alex writes about his initiative to raise money for charity in his branch.
The proudest moment for me was setting up regular charity stalls in our regional centre to drive up engagement with the branch and young members. We already ran events in the office on things like cancer awareness, so I thought it would work well alongside that.
As young members we had little to no presence in the regional centre, so I got help from the then Yorkshire and Humberside young members’ convenor and a couple of full time officials from the Leeds office.
What started out as a drive to raise engagement with young members was adopted by my branch and developed into the branch raising funds monthly to help charitable causes and promote PCS.
We were told that PCS could not collect for Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) in the regional centre, as it was deemed "too political." As a branch, we decided to raise money for MAP by holding collections outside the building with buckets instead. This drove up engagement with our members as we got to speak to everyone as they came in and out of the building and made their donations. We raised nearly £1,000 for a good cause.
All of this came about because as a young member I had the idea, courage and support to make something positive happen in my branch and workplace.