A student campaigner, who set up a charity to deal with eating disorders, has been chosen to carry the Olympic Torch through part of Oxford. Nicola Byrom, a 24 year old PHD student, began the charity ‘Student Run Self Help’ (SRSH) which helps those with eating disorders by “enabling to run safe and effective self help groups” within their universities.
Byrom suffered from an eating disorder herself, and “following work running a self help group for B-eat, was keen to develop a system to engage university students in running self help groups”, the website of SRSH explains.
Set up in 2009, the charity now operates at 14 universities throughout Britain, it has helped a total of 200 students within the last year. Byrom is one of only 3 people from Oxford University to be put forward for nomination, and on a national level, she will be one of 8000 carefully selected individuals. The bearers are chosen to carry the Olympic torch because of their inspirational work in their chosen field.
On the 9th July Nicola will be fulfilling 300 metres of the torch’s seventy day long itinerary across Britain, starting at Land’s End and ending in the Olympic Stadium. It is hoped that the Olympic Flame will come within ten miles of the 95% of people in the UK, Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, celebrating the achievements of individuals such as Byrom in their local area.
“It’s great to see the Olympics being used to highlight issues that affect the world at large, as well as ways in which to tackle them” said Hugh Jeffery, a student at Wadham.
Cameron Cook (Lincoln College) also supported the University’s decision to use its prestige to bring such issues to the fore, both within the University itself and in the wider public sphere.
For more information about Student Run Self Help visit:
