By Leroy-Winston Scott

3rd year BU student, BA (Hons) Events Management

This is where I am supposed to write why choose BU, instead I can only write why I chose to follow my passion. I believe a great deal of our ‘greatness’ comes from us believing in what we can achieve, and I feel that every individual should have the opportunity to discover their greatness, yet unfortunately this is not guaranteed for so many, a major contributing factor to the squashing of lifetime opportunities and self-belief is discrimination in all its various guises’.

My passion for there to be a change and disruption to discrimination led to me getting involved with the Students Union from the very beginning, initially as the Democracy Officer for the Executive Committee. Throughout this journey I met some incredible people who had similar views to myself, and were pro-active in nature. I was put in touch with the organisation ‘Peace One Day’ who have grown to affect millions of people’s lives across the globe and become a movement which is heard closely by the U.N. 5 months into my post I was voted by my fellow students to represent them and the university at the N.U.S National Conference, with an attendance of 1,400 from universities all over the country it was a fantastic opportunity to network and get to ask questions and gain a real insight into how the N.U.S operate. It was also a conference where the founder of Peace One Day would be present and speaking, a talk I did not want to miss, and I really didn’t!

1 week before the conference I was asked to speak with a friend on behalf of the organisation at the conference, right before Jeremy Gilley, the Founder, on a national stage, what an opportunity. On the day we were so excited, me and my friend delivered in what was the ‘Nelson Mandela Suite’ a presentation with so much passion and vigour that we were asked then to sit on the Panel with Jeremy, answering questions about involvement, ideas, issues from around the globe, I could not believe I was sat on this stage equal with a huge inspiration to myself. Once we finished with the Q&A we had a moment to personally speak to Jeremy, which as it turns out he was requesting for our time as he was so impressed with our delivery, message and most importantly passion that we were asked to front a national marketing campaign to highlight the importance of students and their input into making changes.

When deciding where I wanted to go to university I listened to my heart and it took me to Bournemouth University, BU then took my passion onto a National Stage.