BCU Student Safety Weekend - have you ever gone?

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annie
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BCU Student Safety Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by annie » Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:46 am

tHey,

Just wondering if anyone from a uni club has ever attended this? It's sounds very useful for people running university kayak clubs... maybe to a lesser extent for people running other clubs. If I was free to go I'd probably go myself. Is there anyone from Ireland with any feedback on it? Or was there ever anything similar here?

Here are the details:
Student Safety Organisers wrote:The student safety initiative has been running for a few years now with support from the BCU. At the moment, we run a seminar in North Wales in
October and 2 back to back more practical courses in Scotland at Easter. The seminar is aimed at those who are going to be running the club next year or who are already running the club, the plan being to make them aware of the factors, pit falls and responsibilities of running a uni cc.

The Seminar is roughly 25% lecture and 75% on the water, with a diverse range of subjects covered, including transport, responsibility, club ethos, personal skills, safety/rescue, trip planning - the list goes on. There are no real pre-requisites as there are a range of workshops. Having said that, those who find themselves in a responsible position in the club tend to be able to paddle so we don't really cater for absolute beginners...

...The seminar costs £60...
List of Topics Covered
Running Productive Pool Sessions

2* Assessment – A chance to be assessed on the new UKCC syllabus.

Foundation Safety Test – A chance to be assessed on the new syllabus.

Running Productive Taster Sessions – A good taster session in Fresher's Week will ensure you get more people into your club. This sessions explores the ideas behind a good taster session.

Open Boating for those who don't – Come and find out what all the fuss is about!

Introduction to Rope Work – for those looking to tackle rivers in more challenging environments, this session looks at some simple rope work techniques to make inspection, portages, access and egress safer.

Tea time Q+A sessions:
These sessions give you a chance to pick the brains of both some of the UK's top coaches and most experienced student kayakers on the following subjects:

- The relationship between the BCU, AU and You
- River Trip Planning
- Club Kit
- Overseas Trips
- Sea and Surf

Day 2
Running an Intro river trip – How to ensure people's first taste of white water doesn't scare the bejesus out of them, hurt anyone, or cause carnage in general.

Running an intermediate river trip – This one looks at how you can move people on from merely following to being independent on the river.

Running steep rivers safely – How you can let people really push themselves safely.

3* Assessment – A chance to be assessed on the new UKCC syllabus.

WWSR – The Practical! - A chance to gain some practical safety and rescue experience. You will get wet doing this workshop!

WW Personal Skills – Is there an area of your kayaking that needs some improvement? Come and get some coaching!

Effective Coaching – There's more to coaching than just yelling at people. This workshop explores how you can really help people develop by becoming a more effective coach.

Sea and Surf- A look at the factors affecting running a safe trip on the salt water side of things.

That's all...

If you're free that weekend a hundred bucks + travel expenses could have your club running so smoothly over the year if it's actually as good as it sounds.

(edited for spelling)
Last edited by annie on Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ken
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Re: BCU Student Safey Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by Ken » Fri Sep 19, 2008 11:41 am

Looks good, wonder if there is any chance of an ICU one?

muirs
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Re: BCU Student Safey Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by muirs » Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:40 pm

You'd have to imagine it's only for BCU clubs tho...?

Brian
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Re: BCU Student Safey Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by Brian » Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:26 pm

Whats stopping an ICU Student Saftey weekend?

Adrians
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Re: BCU Student Safey Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by Adrians » Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:40 pm

Brian wrote:Whats stopping an ICU Student Saftey weekend?
Whats stopping the students being proavtive and doing it themself?

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rlynch
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Re: BCU Student Safey Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by rlynch » Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:45 pm

Cost and time probably. That said, I presume most college clubs do organise various skills, rescue, instructor and first-aid courses independently.

Given that there are so many college-based clubs in the country it would be no bad thing.

Ross
We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded!

annie
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Re: BCU Student Safety Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by annie » Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:14 pm

muirs wrote:You'd have to imagine it's only for BCU clubs tho...?
As it happens, not necessarily...

Though if all 17 clubs from the varsities this year swamped the thing I'd imagine the organisers would reconsider.
Adrians wrote:What's stopping the students being proactive and doing it themselves
That's a lovely idea Adrian, but practically

- a lack of appropriate experience and qualifications
- time constraints - running an active kayak club leans more towards a full time rather than a part-time job

If an independent group organised this would it get much uptake from college clubs I wonder? I suppose it depends on cost as well.

Adrians
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Re: BCU Student Safety Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by Adrians » Fri Sep 19, 2008 5:24 pm

Annie,

In fairness you are right my reply was a bit of a one liner. But as for the ICU being able to set up such a thing, you would have to contact them for there offical resopnse. But i'm sure ti would go along the line of lack of resources / budget & staff to do such a seminar. However I would be massivly suprised if they would not lend support where they could.

As for the running of kayak clubs and how much time it takes, I know the massive work all the club commitees do. Perhaps this is where if it was something Collage clubs wanted to do it might be where they could call on the people who have passed throught there clubs ansd gained so much to give a small bit of time in helping run one of these seminars???? There is a wealth of tallent that has passed throught the collage club system and I'm sure most of them would be all about helping out if they could...Ali,Coffeey, Rosco, Benny, Dr Nick, Mr Jones, the list goes on)

If the clubs were serious about this, maybe at the Varsities this year when ye all sit down to decided to hold it the folllow year, each club might nominate one person (OFB or otherwise but not a current club comittee member) to look into running of one seminars?

Adrian

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jimkennedy
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Re: BCU Student Safety Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by jimkennedy » Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:52 pm

It can be done by student clubs - students are not as useless as they look! This year UCD had a safety weekend in Wicklow. I can't speak for the other clubs but UCD has a load of well-qualified young types and enough oldies to fill a nursing home. It took a massive effort by a bunch of them, but everyone on the course they organised thought it was great. It would be a really big job to do one for an entire club, so UCD picked about a dozen 'future leader' types and gave them an intensive course. UCD could easily have picked two dozen but the course would be hard to organise and the group size would have mitigated against a good learning environment. The idea was that the group taking the course were involved club paddlers and they would pass on the knowledge. By repeating the course every year over a few years, you would get the knowledge distributed throughout the club.

Anyway, I wrote about it at the link below, and I'm still working on the video (anyone know how to edit video?):

UCD Rescue Weekend

Jim.

annie
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Re: BCU Student Safety Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by annie » Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:49 am

We run similar courses at NUIG; our first was at the weekend. However, I'd imagine smaller clubs would find it more difficult. IMO it would be a good addition to the training calendar at canoe.ie. It would help improve safety at a university level and promote the sport by ensuring that the training clubs deliver is fun and of a high standard. We're pretty well off in some ways in Galway but I think it's definitely something worth considering.

tiernan
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Re: BCU Student Safety Weekend - have you ever gone?

Post by tiernan » Mon Sep 22, 2008 5:45 pm

In responce to people saying "why should the ICU organise safety training for college clubs":

A few reasons off the top of my head:

1) All college clubs are affiliates, and many club members, are members of the Irish Canoe Union. Its not the duty of these members to simply pay subs to the ICU and see little or nothing in return for it, but that the elected representatives of said union recognize the niche of college paddling and void in their [ICU] presence at the Uni level.

2) Uni Kayaking accounts for a sizable chunk of the kayaking population in Ireland (spanning all grades and disciplines), and as the governing body the ICU should (as the BCU have) take responsibility for Safety training of all clubs , but defiantly the less financed ones like the Uni Clubs.

3) As Uni Clubs have a huge through put of members (Approx Shelf life of a member being 4 years), it is often hard to maintain a certain level of standard of kayaker, let alone standard of rescue as is kept in private clubs (There should at this point be recognition and applaud for the committees of uni clubs that painstakingly try to keep the standard high). There is a high demand on oldies, etc. to make up the numbers, and teach the new generations in the clubs how stuff is done. If there was a stable, unchanging body capable of admin-ing this (Or some sort of "Union" of Canoe Clubs in Ireland) then rescue standards and practices would be uniform across all clubs and regularly organized by them.... wait a min... there is a Union of Canoe clubs in ireland... isnt there???

4) Since most Uni clubs have to recognize the ICU in their constitutions as the regulatory body and abide by the safety grounds that they set down, therefore making themselves a local extension of the ICU in their own area/college, then the ICU has a duty to ensure that safe practice is being carried out within those institutions, and specific safety meetings like the BCU safety weekend, would be a perfect opportunity to make sure that that is done in a controlled manner.

Now like i said that was just a response to why they SHOULD do it, im sure that there are valid reasons as to why they SHOULDN'T do it.... or im sure someone will find those reasons...

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