Interview on Social Safety at study association Congo

What is your connection with social safety?  

"As Congo, we have been working hard on a social safety protocol over the past year. We hope to finalise the protocol soon and implement it in the student association. Since last year, we have had two confidants instead of one. Thus, we are trying to create more social safety within our association through multiple ways." 

Why does Congo think it is important to focus on social safety?  

"Social safety has become an increasing issue in society since the corona pandemic. That is why we think it is important to make our members more aware of this too and also offer them a sense of social safety. We think it is important for people to be able to be themselves and for that, feeling safe is important. Attention to social safety will hopefully contribute to this." 

How do you think we can work together to create and maintain a safe study environment?  

"We think it is important to make it clear who you can turn to with what as a student. The UvA's confidants could be a bit more visible. We could help with that by disseminating that information to our members. In addition, the UvA could perhaps support us by letting students know that the associations also have confidential counsellors, because the threshold for this might be lower. Furthermore, the course that is offered to student associations could best be a bit more extensive. The content of the course that is now offered for confidential advisers was pretty self-explanatory." 

What is your advice to students who may be seeing or experiencing unwanted behaviour?  

"Our advice would be to talk about it with someone you trust and then decide together where you can best turn. Our confidential advisers are always available." 

Note: starting in February, new confidential advisers will again be chosen at the study associations