Layla Quaedvlieg, incoming Action Against Homelessness President
Meet Layla Quaedvlieg, the changemaker and future president of Student Action Against Homelessness, who is raising awareness to change the stigma surrounding homelessness through empathy.
Our Mission
Student Action Against Homelessness is an all-inclusive society with the ongoing aim of helping prevent homelessness.
We do this through three major strands: raising money and awareness, helping conduct research and engaging in political action. These three strands underpin the variety of talks, fundraising activities, research projects, communications with policymakers and direct action that we do.
Creating Christmas care packages
My highlight for this year would be the Christmas outreach sessions, which were three sessions in a row where we spent the first half of the session creating gift packs, listening to Christmas music all together as a society, and writing Christmas cards.
In the second half, we handed out gift packs containing necessities to local homeless communities. The way everyone came together was amazing and I think it was the first time our society really felt like a community of people united in making a difference. It made us realise as a collective how successful we could be and inspired us to recruit more volunteers and do the sessions regularly.
My proudest moment
I'd say one of the proudest moments was definitely the bake sale that we did in November because we didn't really expect much. We didn't think that many people would show up with cakes to sell, and we didn't think that many people would buy them in the Student Centre.
However, we completely cleared out all our stock and we raised nearly £500 which was double our target, so we were all really proud of what we had achieved.
Gaining new perspectives
The society itself has bought a lot of new perspectives on homeslessness with determination and drive to make an impact. Even though there's different levels of homelessness across the world and different places, everyone involved wants to make a difference. So, it's always really great to see our students come together to help that and I think that's really encouraging.
I've found that joining the society has been an opportunity to make new friends and meet new people with similar goals and similar mindsets that I wouldn't necessarily have run across otherwise, such as working with postgrads or mature students.
I think I've also learned how important volunteering is and how that's definitely something I'd like to continue throughout my life.