University College London have been selected as the Pot Noodle Society of the month for February 2025 for their amazing charity stream in support of Cancer Research UK. You can check out the stream in the social links at the bottom of the article. We spoke to the president of the society (UCLG), Eddie, to ask him some questions about the stream and their plans going forward!
Congratulations on winning society of the month for February! We were really impressed with the charity stream you guys ran - could you tell us a little bit about it?
Yeah, of course! So this was our first solo charity stream (in previous years, they had all been done with CLUE (KCL, Imperial and LSE)). We ran it for 12 hours (noon to midnight) of a lot of in-person chaos; I really wanted the community to feel like they were able to be involved with the stream, so we had quite a few milestones planned. This included some silly costumes, water buckets, shaving hair and tattoos, among many others. I will say, and this is a great piece of experience to learn from: some of the milestones did take up a lot longer than we expected, so a few hours in our schedule went a bit awry, but all in all we just reacted to what the viewers wanted to see and tried to entertain them as much as possible, which I like to think we managed to do.
We raised £1552.69 in total for Cancer Research UK which, to my knowledge, is the greatest amount UCL have ever managed to raise for charity in a stream, even with donation matching - a huge testament to my committee's hard work and infectious attitude! There were around 300 unique viewers, which for me, really stands out, as it's amazing knowing that we've got a lot more outreach in the community and the wider UCL/gaming crowds. Ultimately, I'm super proud of the team and thankful to our viewers; I honestly didn't expect that we'd crack four digits.
It was also just really fun! There was a bit of chaos when we were switching venues (we started off in Matcha Mochi Cafe and then had to move to my flat), and keeping the stream running (or vaguely alive) during tech issues was a bit of a challenge, but all of our silly punishments and activities were a blast, and for any other societies or future committees thinking of doing something like this, it's well worth the planning and effort, and most of all is for a really good cause.
Wow! Sounds like a really eventful day. Do you have a personal highlight of the stream?
We hosted KCL's Valorant admin and his team for some online custom games later in the evening, which was a great palate-cleanser to some of the more turbulent activities in the day, namely my Outreach Officer, Jvan, having makeup done and being forced to wear a bunny costume (think Rascal Does Not Dream), much to the delight of our viewers, my Events Officer, Jasmine, having her legs waxed and myself having my hair all but shaved off. We had a couple people donate huge amounts too - one individual donated over £300 by himself; don't worry, we made his money worth it with free peripherals and prizes!
R.I.P to your hair! UCLG clearly worked hard to raise so much money, and for such a great cause. Can I ask why you selected Cancer Research UK?
We were a bit stuck in the planning phase with which charities to support - there was a good amount of debate, as so many charities have such great reasons to be chosen! We honestly could've chosen any number of charities, and would've done so very happily. In the end, we chose Cancer Research for a more personal reason: my own father was diagnosed with stage 3 brain cancer a few years back, and battled pretty hard to be in remission, and I've had many friends have to deal with family members being diagnosed with cancer recently. It's a really unavoidable issue right now, and giving as much as we can to help treat, if not cure, something so indiscriminate is the least we can do.
I'm so sorry to hear that. UCLG have done an amazing job fighting back through fundraising. You and your committee have all earned a break, but I have to ask: do you have any big plans for the rest of the year?
Yeah, huge, huge events! In mid-March, we've got a Varsity tournament against Imperial, Roehampton and Royal Holloway, which we're really hoping to bring home; our Esports Officer, Wasi, has been hard at work leading this with his skills and experience, and we're super excited to expand our competitive rivalries to other universities outside of CLUE! At the end of the month, we're also going to be taking part in the London Varsity Series against KCLSU, representing Esports for the first time ever! It's been in the works since around October/November, and has caused countless headaches in the planning, but I've absolutely no doubt this will be an incredible event. Having grown up playing rugby and still enjoying it to this day, I'm no stranger to the whole idea of a 'sports culture', and there's still a stigma around esports - it will be wonderfully fulfilling to be able to not only push esports as its own competitive sport, but also to stand on equal footing with loads of other established teams as we hope to help UCL win our fifth Varsity series in a row.
On a less competitive side, Jasmine and I are hard at work planning smaller, more chill events for our members - I can only really tease socials at Meltdown and online movie nights, to not spoil too much! But we've also got all our game admins hard at work planning events for their own separate communities, so I'm super excited to see what they come up with before the exam season takes over! We're also planning a MASSIVE event at the end of the year, post-exams! Unfortunately, this didn't happen last year, so we're going to try to push out our 10(+1) year anniversary event, which should hopefully be a nice, fancy way to round off what's been an incredible year for us, with a bit of dressing up and potentially a lot less sobriety than is appropriate, but with exams over I wouldn't expect any less.
Once again, a big shoutout to my committee for their efforts - the stream and our future events really would not be possible without them!
Definitely keeping up the grind throughout the year then! Finally, as a shoutout to our partners Pot Noodle - if you could make any flavour Pot Noodle, what would it be?
Oooh, honestly, can't say I've thought about this. I guess I'd have to push for something Chinese and represent... Potentially red braised pork or something. Can't go wrong with that!
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