A GROUP of KU children’s nursing students won a talent prize this sum-mer for raising £4,500 to support their former classmate, who suffers from terminal cancer and is likely to have less than two years left to live.

The fundraiser, called Brightness, raised money to help the 27-year-old complete her personal bucket list, rang-ing from swimming above the Great Barrier Reef to getting her driver’s li-cence.

The student, whose name inspired the title, was diagnosed with metastatic medulloblastoma, a brain tumour that had spread to other places in the body, in the summer of 2014.

“It was amazing to see that bad news initiated such passion to turn some-thing so sad into something incredi-ble,” said the student. “I really can-not thank [the Brightness committee] enough for what has been done for me in this diffi cult time.”

One of her closest friends, Reanne Jarvis, was a driving force during the six week project, which was led by ten students and three lecturers in the

“close-knit community”. Reanne said that when the com-

mittee organised a fancy dress walk around Kingston to raise awareness, the student showed up to show her sup-port, even though she had been through treatment and was feeling very unwell.

“It was quite a cold day, but she made a point of coming and bringing chocolate for everyone. She stood out-side and waited for everyone to come

back. That’s the sort of person that she is,” said Reanne.

“Her mum was extremely grateful and said some amazing things about our group that day. She pretty much brought everyone to tears.”

The student had battled a tumour at the age of 21, which was one of the rea-sons she wanted to become a children’s nurse.

After learning that the cancer had

returned, she accepted that she had to abandon her goal to become a nurse and permanently withdraw from her course.

Associate professor of children’s nursing Jayne Price said: “The termi-nal diagnosis rocked the whole group.

“As well as getting the blow that she was going to die, she also had the blow that she was never going to become a children’s nurse.”

When told that her former class-mates wanted to raise money to help her complete her bucket list, Reanne said her friend found it “completely unbelievable”.

She has vowed to make the best of the time she has left, and has already been to the United States, where she took windsurfi ng lessons and hugged the largest tree in the world, General Sherman.

Her next journey is set to begin in January, during which she will visit Australia and the Great Barrier Reef.

“The Brightness fundraiser has had a signifi cant impact on both me and my family,” the girl said. “Such chari-table efforts will never be forgotten by myself or those close to me.”

KINGSTON STUDENTS raised just under £300 for the Syrian refugee cri-sis after putting on a night of “artistic exploration” performances addressing the crisis at Knights Park.

Acting, rapping, singing, spoken word and poetry performances were all part of KU amnesty international soci-ety’s ‘Raise for Refugees’ event

The fundraiser held at Knights Park bar kicked off with a perfor-mance entitled Crisis by Dinghy – a group of third year Kingston Uni-versity drama students made up of Connor Smith, Emma Owens, Ol-ivia Cramsie, Ella Morris and Sean McAlinden-Barber.

“It was a politically charged physical piece, based around the Syrian refugee

crisis. We drew on some motifs that are very current but also echoed some past refugee issues too,” said Smith.

“One of the facts in our piece when we performed it back in June was 11,000 children had been killed but when we checked the facts for this performance the death toll had risen to 50,000 children alone. The death toll in total had risen to 450,000.”

Those attending were able to munch on free boxes of popcorn and have a glitter make over while watching the performances that were all in aid of an important issue.

Various other acts included United Crisis by rapper Fresh Mind and The Play by spoken word artist Kamal Has-san Mohammed.

Amnesty international media offi cer Holly Duffi eld, 20, said: “The amnesty ‘I welcome’ campaign is so important because it sends a message of love and welcome at a time which recently has seemed so unaccepting of victims of political warfare.

“The event consisted of artistic ex-plorations of the refugee crisis. The £3 entry and all the donations went to aid-ing the refugees,” she added.

News 8

Kingston students raise money for Syrian refugees with artistic event

Many students took to Knights Park for the event Photo: Yasemin Gava

Oda Ottesen

Cancer patient’s bucket-list made possible by Kingston

KINGSTON UNIVERSITY will introduce a new user-friendly StudySpace system from Septem-ber 2017 onwards.

About 60 per cent of US univer-sities already use the program de-signed by company Canvas VLE (Virtual Learning Environment). Linda Price, head of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL).

A professor of educational tech-nology at KU explained the bene-fi ts of the new system.

“The new program has a great reliability, lots of guides and lots of support, basically 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” said Price.

“It is user-centred and has a very different concept as it is more of a 21st-century way of approaching the community, and I am sure a lot of students are going to enjoy it.”

“As a student I always hated the way Blackboard was laid out,” Teaching Graduate Assistant at the university, Andrew McDowell, said.

He added that Canvas would pro-vide teachers and students with a much moremore user-friendly and experience in a “much smoother way”.

The Metropolitan Police Ser-vice (MPS) has launched what is thought to be the largest issuing in the world of offi cer-worn body cameras.

Kingston will be in phase three of the deployment and although an exact date is yet to be set, it is expected to be in effect by spring 2017, when every regularly public meeting and front line offi cer will be issued a body camera.

“Video captures events in a way that can’t be represented on paper in the same detail, a picture paints a thousand words,” said Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe.

“It has been shown the mere presence of this type of video can often defuse potentially violent sit-uations without the need for force to be used.”

Body cameras have already been issued to offi cers in boroughs like Lewisham, and over the coming months, will be issued to all 32 boroughs, which equates to over 22,000 MPS front line offi cers.

The use of body-cameras is to improve street safety and enhance the service MPS can give to the people of London and the large-scale deployment began in October.

NEWS IN BRIEF

Bucket list1. Hug the largest tree in the world2. Swim above the Great Barrier Reef3. See the cherry blos-soms in Japan4. Learn how to knit5. Get my driver’s licence6. Try windsur� ng7. Go skydiving

Rachel Andrews

Australia next Photo: Rex Features

A supporter Photo: Yasemin Gava

Johanna Christoph

Anastasia Edwards

Kingston students will get brand new StudySpace

Kingston police set to wear body cameras in mass roll-out