Reflecting
This key section helps to highlight the successes and challenges faced during your campaign, guiding you throughout its course by ensuring you are on track for achieving your aims.
You should try to review your campaign at least half way through and at the end. However, reviewing after each campaigning tactic is also an effective way to ensure your campaign remains on track.
To reflect on your campaign, consider both monitoring and evaluating your campaign…
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Monitoring:
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Reviewing your campaign regularly throughout its course is a great way to identify any obstacles in the way of your aims, giving you an opportunity to adapt your strategy accordingly.
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Reflecting on the use of your campaign tools will help to identify the more effective strategies, allowing you to help to focus your efforts and increase momentum.
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Evaluation:
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At the end of your campaign, reflect on your learning outcomes created in Step 1. Remember you can ask your campaign team to identify what went well, what could have worked better, and how the understanding of your campaign has changed during its duration.
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Reviewing your campaign will provide crucial evidence to help learn from mistakes and successes that can feed into future campaigns.
Looking After Yourself (Listen To Your Body, Relax/Unwind, Set Boundaries)
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Being part of a campaign is highly rewarding, but can also be very demanding. When you’re continuously prioritising the needs of others and fighting for social justice, something to remember is to practice self-care during your campaign.
1. Listen to your body
Your body can’t run on empty. If you are trying to think of ideas at 8:00pm at night after a full day's work and you haven’t eaten dinner, the probability you’re going to do your best work is very low. Make sure you listen to what your body is saying and keep it well looked after.
2. Relax and unwind
Set some time aside to do an activity you enjoy that will help you relax. Some examples from the SU staff team include:
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Have a bath (add candles for added luxury)
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Take a walk, go swimming or try an exercise class
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Cook a nice meal
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Have a pamper session, paint your nails, do a facemask
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Call someone for a chat
3. Set boundaries
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Try and set your own personal boundaries during your campaign, some good ones to think about are: having clear communicative guidelines on the ways you like to work; taking rest breaks (spending a night watching Netflix in your pj’s is totally fine) and making ‘no’ a part of your vocabulary and not feeling guilty for it!
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Overall, never forget that self-care activities are completely personal and how you engage in any form of self-care is entirely down to you. Some people may enjoy a long bubble bath, whereas others may find this stressful. What’s important is finding a self-care idea that works for you.