Hi everyone!
I am Giulia and I am currently enrolled as 2nd year PhD in Classics, at Corpus Christi College. First and foremost, apologise for my absence today, but at the moment I am not in the Country. However, if you have any query about my nomination, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
First, a little bit of myself. I arrived in Cambridge for my PhD two years ago, after completing my previous education in Pavia, in Italy, where I was also a member of Collegio Borromeo. I therefore have a long college experience, being well-trained to work in team and in students’ associations. Additionally, in Cambridge I am a member of other societies, like the Cambridge Union Society and the European Society, where I fulfilled the position of communications officer last year.
I got in touch with the Italian Society in the last months, but I did not have the chance to actively operate for it, both because the committee’s team was already structured and because the whole organization of the society seemed a bit confused. Nevertheless, I really would like to take an active part of it, running in these incoming elections for the position of the TREASURER.
What seems to me to be one of the main problems of the Italian Society is the shortage of available funds both to make of this Society an active and really efficient one, and to organise events appealing enough to catch the attention of the Cambridge students, both Italian and not. Potentially, considering the large amount of Italian students in Cambridge, I believe that the Italian Society could be quite a leading one, being a point of reference for many of us and a starting point to build useful relations in academic and job fields. As a potential treasurer, the first step to undertake would be to discuss and figure out in a clear way the dynamics adopted to administrate the finances of the Society in the previous years. I am sure that much more could be done to strengthen them. In particular, I am thinking of the following points, but it goes without saying that I would be open to any other suggestion, being firmly confident that an efficient cooperation is essential for the improvement of the current situation of our Society.
- The membership price should be systematically requested to everyone who wants to become member of the Society: it did not seem to work in this way when I got in touch with the Society, when there were not even proper registration forms to join it. As many other societies in Cambridge do, I would suggest to offer different kinds of memberships at different prices: e.g. 10£ for one-year membership, 25£ for 3 year-membership (mainly thinking of PhD students, most likely to stay in Cambridge for 3 years) and a higher amount (to be discussed) for a life-membership. However, a clear statement of the advantages brought by such memberships (mainly by the latter –and most expensive one) should be provided.
- The fund-raising activities should definitely be encouraged and properly advertised: at the moment, the website itself of the Italian society, which should be a first step to know about the society, its sponsors and the way to make donations, looks extremely vague and like it has not been updated for a while. I think that providing a clear sketch of the current sponsors of the Society would be a good starting point to incentivize any other potential donations. Therefore, a close collaboration between the role of the treasurer and the role of communications /events officer would be useful.
A further channel to raise funds could be through strengthening the relationship with the Cambridge Italian Research Network, organised by the Faculty of LLM – Italian (which mainly organises lectures, readings of Dante’s etc..). Taking part at these events as society committee could be a good chance to ask for donations to the society.
- Each public event, like conferences, books presentations, movie nights etc. should be priced (and therefore properly organised). Significant reductions for members.
The points I have outlined above are the main and starting efforts to undertake in order to help the finances of our Society, which seem to have been quite instable for the last months. As I have already said, should I get your vote, I would be very happy to discuss any kind of related-issues with you and very open to adopt other –as long as concretely efficient- strategies.
Thanks in advance for your attention,
Giulia Fanti